


War of Peace

by GeneralSherman



Series: Games of Life & Death [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Attempts at Comic Relief, Ballroom Dancing, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm my own beta reader, In Medias Res, Major Character Injury, Mostly Canon Compliant, My First AO3 Post, My First Fanfic, My writing's improved a lot since I first made this, OC Side Characters, Originally written in 2017, Plainclothes/formal wear fight scenes, Post-OW2, Questionable attempt at a montage sequence, References/Builds on Events in the Comics and Shorts, Rewritten in places from original version, Shipping on the side, Smidge of Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Tags May Change, Undercover Operations, fast-paced, learning from past mistakes, longfic, mild infighting and mild teasing, other characters not mentioned in tags, reposted from ffn, sad but hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27429274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneralSherman/pseuds/GeneralSherman
Summary: A year after the events of Overwatch 2 and two years after the Recall, Overwatch has managed to stop the advance of Null Sector and bring a tentative calm to the world, despite still technically being outlaws. Some new and familiar faces have joined and others have gone to forge their own path again, but though the team continues to fight the good fight they're still getting their feet back underneath them, and the greater threat of Talon remains ever constant. When a gala is set to be held at the Palace of Versailles - with several current and former Overwatch members on the guest list - to celebrate a recent summit that could solidify the peace, it is up to the team to try and keep one step ahead of their enemies and make sure that everything they've fought so hard for doesn't go up in smoke.
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler
Series: Games of Life & Death [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033533
Kudos: 11





	1. Versailles

The first thing Jesse McCree felt as he came to was the pattering of rain on his hair.

As he regained a slightly better degree of consciousness, he also noticed that he had a splitting headache. His temples were throbbing incessantly, the back of his head felt like it had been thrown into a concrete wall, and his ears were ringing as though someone had just fired off a full clip from a machine gun three feet away.

He tried to reach up and rub his forehead to try to calm down the screaming pain receptors, but he soon found that his hands were securely handcuffed behind his back and moving one without bringing the other with it would be impossible. He next tried to stand up, an attempt rendered unsuccessful by the fact that he was dazed from this mysterious blow to the point where he could barely see.

Nothing here was particularly unusual for him; Waking up like this was something that came with the territory for a barfly and an outlaw such as himself. What was unusual, however, was that he was having a hard time remembering just what had led up to this blackout. All he remembered was that he had stepped outside of a very decorative-looking building for a smoke break, he'd heard a pair of guys talking not far away, and that he'd gotten a bit closer to eavesdrop on them. After that, it was straight blackness.

He strained his head up from his stomach-down position to try to get a look around, hoping that the brief period he'd been conscious for had cleared his vision enough that it wouldn't be too blurry. As his eyes refocused themselves, he saw through the dark curtain of rain and clouds that obscured what had once been a starry night. Before him was a long, deep row of intricately trimmed hedges in a massive garden courtyard, each one in the shape of some winged creature or a woman in a long robe. Behind them, off in the distance, was a seemingly endless row of city lights, arranged in tall, symmetrical rectangles, highlighted by a massive triangular tower strewn with lights from top to bottom at the very back of the row.

 _Paris_ , he remembered. The sights before him now opened the floodgates for all of what had happened leading up to his blackout. The events of the last thirty-six hours spread across his mind, jumbled up like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. As his disoriented mind slowly put the pieces back together and a sequence of events was recognized, he felt a sudden surge of fear and urgency: He had to get back inside the palace and warn everyone. NOW.

But before he could even start to pick himself up, two gargantuan arms appeared from behind him, wrapped themselves under his shoulders, and hoisted him up to his feet. He began to struggle in his captor's grip, hoping to wriggle his way to freedom, but this was cut short by a quick punch to the nose by a second aggressor which sent his head tilting backwards at high speed. As he brought his head back into position, his eyes refocused again and locked on the two men dressed as security personnel standing directly in front of him and armed with assault rifles. One of the men was short, somewhat pear-shaped, and had a thin face with a light brown duster on his upper lip, while the other was mid-height with a strong build and a round, clean-shaven face, but with a long, hooked nose and oversized ears. McCree knew these faces instantly and he couldn't help but chuckle.

"Well well, if it ain't 'Cobalt' Kowalski and the Travelin' Circus," he said mockingly to the two men standing in front of him and the thug holding him in place. "I wouldn't a' guessed that I'd see some old Blackwatch trash here. Don't you guys have an old lady to trip or-"

McCree's snide comments were concluded by the long-nosed man punching him again. "Shut it, traitor!" he barked in a thick Lower New York accent. "You ain't in a position to make fun of us!"

"Um, yeah, about that; I kinda am," McCree replied calmly. "When you get a nickname 'cause ya drove yer mom's Cobalt to the base on the first day of work, it's right about guaranteed you're gonna get a few jokes pointed-"

Another punch from Kowalski connected, this one sending McCree's face rotating rapidly to the right. Along the tall walls of the palace, less than a hundred feet away, were bright lights refracting out of immense, ornate windows and an open doorway and casting their glow across the courtyard. His amusement with mocking Kowalski was replaced by a flash of urgency again.

"Well, kiddin' aside, I best be on my way. I kinda got a party I need to keep your boss from crashing: Y'all know how it is." As the words left his mouth, he could see Kowalski and his pear-shaped friend crack a sneer, which soon turned into a smile, and then a snide laugh. This got McCree on edge; When the bad guys laughed like this, it was never a good thing.

"You stupid cowboy, the party's already been crashed. Every gussied-up can opener in there is dead and your little Overwatch buddies are about to follow them," Kowalski gloated through a wide, thin smile.

McCree knew right away that he wasn't lying as he backed away and snickered; guys like Kowalski never looked happy when they lied. Whatever self-confidence and condescension was left on the cowboy's face swiftly departed and was replaced with abject terror; If the Omnic guests were dead, then the peace agreement that the party was celebrating would be shattered. Dr. Zeigler and Genji's months of work would be undone instantly. All of Overwatch's planning and effort to protect it, gone in a flash.

And yet despite it, there was still some small part of him that refused to stay down, some urge deep inside his mind that wanted to keep on fighting the good fight until the bitter end. He couldn't tell if it was a pang of conscience like what had led him back to Overwatch or something else entirely, but he simply didn't care when there was still a chance. He knew Talon had carried out their plan, but they hadn't counted on him being out of the line of fire. The time to turn things around was now and goddammit, Jesse McCree wasn't going to let it pass by!

Quickly, his eyes sped around, looking at his captors and the area around them. The outer wall of the palace was only a few feet behind the giant goon, close enough that stepping backwards would run him right into it. Not only that, but on the belt of the pear-shaped minion was his revolver.

Almost immediately, he formulated a plan. His eyes lingered on the gun for a moment, long enough that he knew Kowalski would see it.

"Hey Tepesch," the goon said. "Looks like McCree's found his hardware." Kowalski then removed the six-shooter from the belt and flipped it around so that he was holding it by the barrel and the grip was pointing at McCree. He closed the small distance between himself and his prisoner, locking his sickly green eyes on McCree's mud-brown eyes and stopping just over a foot away from the cowboy as he raised his left hand high above his head, ready to bring it down any moment. "Well this just seems ironic," he declared. "I'm gonna enjoy it."

That's when the trapped outlaw sprung into action.

In an instant, McCree used the humongous arms under his shoulders as an anchor point, curled his back, lifted his legs so that they were at an equal level to his waist, and delivered a heavy two-leg kick to Kowalski's ribcage, sending him flat onto his back as Tepesch jumped backwards to avoid being caught up in the tumble. The force of the kick also sent the massive cronie holding the cowboy colliding with the wall behind them in a hard thud.

With the thug dazed, McCree delivered another kick, this time to the side of the shin on the immense thug's right leg, which was followed by a loud shatter. The goon howled out in pain as he raised his leg to relieve the pressure on the splintered bones. This allowed McCree to, by shifting his own weight and again using the huge arms that entrapped him, bring the both of them forward and send them to the ground, the goon's massive frame in front of his own.

It came not a moment too soon.

"Shoot him, you idiot!" Kowalski screamed with what air hadn't been knocked out of his lungs. Tepesch opened fire with his assault rifle, but McCree's maneuvers had made the towering thug into an impromptu shield that absorbed every bullet sent its way. The pear-shaped man ran closer to grab a new angle, but not before McCree had slipped his arms under his tucked-in legs, allowing his cuffed hands a wider field of movement and the ability to fight back. The outlaw jumped over the still body of the large goon, lunged at his gun-toting attacker, slipped around him and choked him, using the energy chain of his handcuffs as a garrote.

Tepesch dropped the rifle and pulled out a small pulse pistol, firing it wildly behind his own head in the hopes that a lucky shot would find its mark. Instead, McCree saw it as an opportunity; He moved his hands forward, his metal left hand and the inside edge of the handcuffs where the chain met the shackle just at the edge of the pistol's barrel. In this position, one of the pistol's shots was sent directly into the irons, shattering it and freeing his hands. The moment after the shot had pierced the handcuffs, McCree brought his metal fist back towards Tepesch, striking him directly on the face and rendering him unconscious in an instant.

The more immediate threat removed, he whirled around to where Kowalski had made impact with the ground, only to see that the patch of ground's occupant was now standing up and pointing its own pistol at McCree at point-blank range. Before he could get off a shot, however, McCree grasped his left arm with his metal hand and snapped it like a toothpick. As he dropped his gun and yowled in pain, McCree's right delivered a punch that knocked the thug out cold and left his hooked nose a bloody, crumpled mess, something that three punches had been unable to do to the now-victorious gunslinger.

"Ain't never much been a fan of irony," McCree said to the unconscious man who had tried to kill him two seconds earlier. He then, reaching for the ground, picked up his Peacekeeper where it had been dropped after his first kick. The white, large-caliber pistol was a little dirty and rain-soaked, but otherwise in perfect working order. A quick check of the bullet chambers showed that the three idiots that now lay strewn on the ground hadn't even bothered to unload the gun after relieving it from their prisoner. He then placed it in the shoulder holster under the jacket he had on in place of his usual poncho and gun belt.

After using the mechanical strength of his prosthetic left to tear off the remaining shackle on his right, he turned his attention to the palace and began sprinting back alongside the wall to the entrance a hundred feet away. Placing two fingers from his right hand on a small earpiece, he frantically said into it:

"Winston, we were right. The Junkers were just there to lead us away from the rest of Reyes' guys. Talon's got an EMP and they're gonna set it off on the Omnics."

No response came, only static. "Winston, you there? Lena? Genji?! Fareeha! Anybody!"

Still no response, only the static and the sound of rain on the grass and the pavement. At that point, thunder rumbled off in the distance, and a flash of lightning could be seen shooting through the sky.

As he rapidly ascended the small set of steps leading to the doorway, rain pelting him as he ran, he nearly tripped over something small that seemed invisible. Looking back at where his foot had met the unseen object, he saw that it had indeed been invisible, but was revealing itself. The technological cloak that had previously shielded the object from sight frazzled, sparked, and then shorted out entirely to reveal a small, circular, purple-coloured object approximately one and a half feet long attached to the wall. On the display panel on the top of the device was an image of a pixelized, lavender-coloured sugar skull. Upon seeing the device, McCree felt another surge of fear; It was an EMP, Talon-designed, and worse still, it was activated.

"No," the gunslinger whispered. The feeling of dread grew inside him, but he didn't linger on it. The EMP was there, activated, and well beyond what McCree knew how to shut off, but something inside him told him that he had to see for himself just how bad things were inside the palace. As he reached the top of the steps and peered inside, what was confirmed looked like a scene straight out of his worst nightmares.

The doorway led to a massive ballroom, with ornate decorations, old mirrors, and priceless works of art covering nearly every inch of the gold-coloured walls. On the ceiling hung immense chandeliers, each fitted with dozens of lightbulbs where candles had once been centuries earlier. The open floor of the room had been filled up at the front with tables and a large stage with a microphone stand and a bigscreen display, while the back of the room was left open as a dance floor, accompanied by a small production stand fitted with chargers for remote control drone cameras at the very back.

However, the room was now mostly empty except for the terrifying scene confronting him.

All of the human guests sitting in the tables were gone and left behind, slumped over in their chairs, were the metallic bodies of nearly two hundred Omnic dignitaries, each one periodically sparking and twitching with pulses from the EMP. On the stage, seven more Talon cronies dressed as security guards were holding assault rifles to the heads of Dr. Angela Zeigler and Lucio dos Santos.

Standing out from even this awful scene, though, were two particular sights that made McCree's blood run cold.

Tracer was at the foot of the stage, sprawled stomach-down on the ground, her chronal accelerator sparking from the same pulses that had done in the Omnics. She desperately tried to stand up, but the high-heeled boot of Widowmaker came down on her lower back. The assassin then aimed her sniper rifle to Tracer's head as a cruel smile spread across her cold, thin lips. On the stage, Genji was in an almost identical position with his cybernetic supports weighing him down, only the Talon agent over him was armed with a semi-automatic shotgun in one hand, clad in black body armour and a hooded overcoat, and wearing a white spectre-like mask on his face. It was a thing that McCree knew far too well: Reaper.

McCree was frozen in place by the sight before his eyes. The dread that had gnawed at him now consumed him entirely, but only for so long as the stubborn, red-ledgered hope fueled him forth again. He couldn't bring the Omnics back and there wasn't even a guarantee that he himself would survive this, but he was definitely going to do his damndest to stop them.

With this desperate courage fueling him, he drew his revolver, lined up a half-dozen targets, and let six shots ring across the room.


	2. What It Could Be

**_Thirty-six hours earlier..._ **

Winston yawned as he half-heartedly climbed up to the console. What he was about to to was both necessary and enjoyable, but as of recent also rather boring.

Watching newsfeeds was an integral part of his daily routine; Every day he'd sit down in his tire-chair at the console in the control room of Watchpoint: Gibraltar with a jar of peanut butter on the desk, a banana in one hand, and scroll through the day's events. He'd liked doing this ever since he was an infant back on the Moon, where he would intake the goings-on of the blue ball outside his window as part of his daily schooling and even on his own time. There was more to it than just a desire to learn, however: Dr. Harold had once told him that the first step towards solving a problem was to know just what exactly the problem was in the first place, one of many pieces of advice the gorilla had picked up from his late mentor and surrogate father and put to good use.

Nowadays though, it had even more meaning to him.

When he had re-initiated Overwatch, the gorilla scientist had known from the start he'd have to take on a leadership role and shoulder more responsibility than just the scientific part he had played in the Golden Age. In the two years that had passed since the fateful day that he had sent out his broadcast on the emergency comms feed only an hour after having fended off Reaper's attack on his home and the agent database, watching the newsfeeds had become less the hobby it had been and more of a job, an obligation, especially since he hadn't been able to get Overwatch's old spy satellites up and running just yet.

With the information from the news, he and the other agents, both new and old, could learn about crucial events and crises and formulate a plan on how to respond to them, even stop something or someone terrible before innocents could get hurt. It wasn't perfect, but their successes against Null Sector had shown that a method with ears on the ground could work just as well as having eyes in the sky. This responsibility didn't dampen Winston's enjoyment of the task, however. If anything, he liked it more now because unlike before, he could actually act on what he saw and change the world for the better, even if every government in the world wanted to arrest him for breaking the terms of the Petras Act.

But like the wind and the weather outside, the news and its significance varied greatly from day to day. The most recent week had been rather slow: A new shopping district added onto Higher New York, a celebrity scandal, and the recall of the latest piece of integration software for self-piloting hovercars had been the most major things over the last few days, and even as much as keeping an eye on the problem was something Winston never tired of doing, it wasn't as though he was on the edge of his seat the entire time.

This day, however, was different.

As he brushed away a leftover banana peel off the holo-keyboard and typed in the command to turn on the news, his eyes widened and his attention snapped back: The feeds were practically stumbling over themselves with what they were calling the biggest story since Omnics were first created. Winston pushed his glasses up his nose as they went past the screen one at a time.

**" _In celebration of the success of the Omnic peace negotiations, a massive gala is being held at the palace of Versailles in Paris-"_**

**_"Jubilant throngs of humans and Omnics celebrate in front of the negotiations office, and even more are expected tomorrow night at Versailles for the party-"_ **

**_"While the representatives for both the human and Omnic sides were unavailable for comment, it is all but guaranteed they will be on hand to celebrate their efforts-"_ **

**_"Dignitaries from over two hundred countries and representatives of countless international organizations such as the Red Cross, the Shambali, and even the U.N. are expected to be present at tomorrow night's soiree in Versailles-"_ **

Watching countless anchor-people and Omnics cover the story, he felt a swell of joy inside himself; The original Overwatch had been founded to bring peace to the Omnic Crisis that had ravaged the world over thirty years ago. They were successful in ending the war, but the battle to keep the peace had been an endless one. From the East China Sea's periodic bouts with the so-called "Gwishin Omnic" to the tensions in King's Row to their own worldwide trek against Null Sector's campaign of destruction, it seemed like successes in Omnic equality were few and far between.

This accord however, he knew, was going to be different. For months on end, politicians, advocates, and dignitaries from the four corners of the globe had participated in the negotiations and made their concerns heard before others. The dissenting voices Russia and King's Row and Null Sector's declarations of endless war had been a continual buzzing in everyone's ears, but in the end, for once, cooler heads prevailed. Many of the sessions had been televised, allowing Winston to watch them with ever-growing senses of pride and joy.

But today, those senses were interrupted by another, one that cut through him like a serrated knife. It was a distinct feeling of concern, rushing into the places that his hope and happiness had blanketed.

There was another problem arising, and he knew exactly what it was.

"Athena, when was the last reported major Talon activity?" he asked.

"Nine months, twelve days, four hours, and thirty-five minutes ago as of today. Since then, sightings of major Talon operatives and movements of known assets have been virtually nonexistent," was the reply.

Even though Athena was the brainchild of founding member Dr. Mina Liao, in the years since her tragic death Winston gotten as close as could be done to perfecting her, the end result being one of the most capable and intelligent A.I. programs in the world, one that he knew Overwatch couldn't run without. Ever since he'd moved into Gibraltar and especially after the Recall, she had been an assistant, confidant, and invaluable with regards to mission organization, preparation, and keeping the team off the radar of interested parties, even if Winston did think she was a little overprotective at times.

He took a moment to ponder his concerns and her reply. It was strange, he thought, that Talon hadn't tried to intervene in the peace talks. If the past two years had shown anything, it was that the terrorist organization had been going to great lengths to disrupt, discourage, and destroy Omnic peace.

The current hotbed of violence and upheaval that had warranted the peace talks had been started after Widowmaker assassinated Tekartha Mondatta, the Omnic leader of the Shambali and a being some had called a modern-day Gandhi. Just under a year had passed before Null Sector, backed by Talon technology, funding, and strategies, had launched an assault on the world's major cities what was quickly dubbed 'The Second Omnic Crisis'. Overwatch had taken them and their overseers on where they found them, but for every plan deduced, skirmish won, and city liberated, it seemed like there was always some detail they had missed that rendered their actions moot and allowed for their enemies' escape. The number of Pyrrhic victories had even been enough to drive Angela away again...

But, the gorilla figured, that was for another time. Talon was going to make a move here; He was sure of it. They had to or this summit stood to wipe clean every single mark they had made on the world.

"Combining the look on your face, the inspiration for your question, and recent news events, I believe I have deduced what you are thinking about doing," Athena said. "And I must tell you that if Talon has plans to disrupt the summit, Overwatch intervention will come at great risk. There is a possibility that they will anticipate our attempts to stop them, not to mention that an organized operation in a place full of people who wish to see Overwatch imprisoned could prove disastrous if we are recognized."

"I know," Winston replied with slight exasperation; the A.I. was being overprotective again. "But if we don't stop them, who else will? We'll figure this out and make sure that everything goes smoothly." His voice, by this point, had taken a reassuring tone.

"Very well. I only ask that you take care at all times," Athena answered after a short pause.

"I always do. Call up all active members, visual feed if possible."

"Already doing so."

On the holoscreen, the newsfeeds were minimized in an instant, their talking heads and urgent stories going with them. In their place appeared the Overwatch Personnel Database, an immense archival record of every single Overwatch agent and employee over its existence. Pictures of people and Omnics, past and present, that had worked and associated with the organization were sifted through at lightning speed, with hundreds of names, pictures, and bios being called up to the screen and removed so fast that the naked eye almost couldn't keep up with them. After about five seconds of sorting, the database had found eight particular pictures and spread them across the screen like a deck of cards in a game of solitaire.

"Sending transmission requests," Athena announced. At this point, a sound line appeared underneath each of the eight pictures, while the pictures themselves changed to a small, blank square with the Overwatch logo in the middle that vibrated intermittently, similar to that of a telephone. The first screen to pick up was on the bottom row, the sound line making high, mountain-like peaks to indicate that the built-in microphone was working and the blank square disappearing in favour of a clear image. In the background was the living room of a mid-sized apartment, while in the foreground was the answerer of Winston's call, a blue-eyed woman with auburn hair wearing a bright red t-shirt and a jean jacket.

"Hello? Oh, goodday to you, Winston! It's been too long since you called up, you great beast! How's everything going? I hope that old base is still cozy enough for you." Her voice was a friendly alto with an Edinburgh accent.

"I'm doing well, Emily. I might have to fix the roof after the last rainstorm that went through here, but I'm doing well. Is Lena home? I need to talk to her about something."

"Aye, she's here. Just got home from getting the messages; I'll call her over." It hadn't been even so much as a second after Emily had called out and said that Winston was on the phone when Tracer appeared in front of the screen in a flash of blue.

"Winston! Good to see you again, love! You caught me at just the right time," she said cheerfully as she blew a lock of her short but messy brunette hair off of her face. "I just got home from a spot of picking up dinner; I'm making a vegan stir fry with Emily's favourite curry on top tonight. I haven't even had the time to take off this thing!" She pointed at her chronal accelerator, the white and blue device that Winston had created to anchor her down in time after the Slipstream accident and the source of what some people back in the Golden Age had called the closest thing to real-life superpowers they had ever seen.

"It's as good as it sounds," Emily piped in before looking over at Tracer with a teasing expression. "Though the curry's not even the hottest thing in the room." She pulled herself in close for a quick kiss on the cheek before Tracer, laughing, slapped her on the shoulder back

Winston chuckled; His best friend was an boundless source of energy and optimism, and her and Emily were perfect for each other. "You know, you don't actually have to wear the accelerator everywhere you go, " he said. "You can set it on area-of-effect mode, activate the miniaturize function, and carry it around in a purse."

"Sounds like a good idea, but I'll think I'll stick with this. I didn't know what half the buttons on here did even after I read the manual." Tracer laughed. "Besides, this makes going around London a sinch, even in rush hour."

"Aye, it actually does. Last time we took the train up to my Nana's cottage, I clocked in that we got to King's Cross in just about five minutes," Emily added in.

"Wow!" Winston exclaimed in near slack-jawed amazement. "To get around that fast, you must have been pushing the waveform replicator to over three thousand five hundred chronal divisions per-" Before he could continue, another one of the blank squares on the screen began showing an image. This one showed another apartment building, but it appeared to be in Numbani, judging by the buildings in the background. In the foreground was Lucio dos Santos, legendary Brazilian freedom fighter, music star, and one of the new members who'd stepped up in a huge way since the battles with Null Sector.

"He-hey, whassup guys? Been too long since I've seen you 'round! Tracer, you speed demon, we still gotta have that rematch! I totally coulda beaten you from Greenwich to Stratford!" Lucio said with his usual showmanship-influenced upbeat tone.

"Don't worry, I'll go easy on you next time," Tracer bantered back. "Say, what's the fancy outfit for? You look like you're going off to the big party in Paris tomorrow night."

"Oh this?" the DJ said, gesturing to the tuxedo he had on in place of his usual jersey. "You just about got it right. Dunno if they said it on the news, but you're looking at the Master of Ceremonies for the whole thing! I've even been working on a special presentation that they're gonna do halfway through."

Winston and Tracer both offered their congratulations and applause for Lucio before another screen turned on, this time from inside what looked to be the cab of a large van.

"HELLO MY FRIENDS! I am overjoyed to see you all again! Lucio, I heard on the TV that you would be at the party! I am so happy for you! I have dreamed of seeing peace like this happen for YEARS!" Reinhardt Wilhelm bellowed from his end of the feed. The great German was so loud that Winston had to almost turn off the volume in order to get the sound to that of a normal talking voice. Just after, a woman's voice could be heard on Reinhardt's end and his head rotated to his left for a moment. Once his focus was back on the screen, he bellowed "Brigitte says hello as well! She's a little busy giving my armour an upgrade."

"Which," Brigitte said as her head poked through the window between the cab and the cargo end. "can wait. Someone's got to keep you out of trouble."

"And I couldn't ask for anyone better to do it!" Reinhardt boomed joyously.

Tracer laughed while massaging her ears. "Good to see you both, too."

* * *

Over the next half an hour, the rest of the calls were answered one by one and all the members of the new Overwatch were sharing stories and catching up with each other.

Fareeha Amari had been at home practicing with the small collection of guitars she'd played as a hobby from her army days; she answered the call while in the middle of a jam session that Lucio promptly joined in with using his hard-light DJ set that had everyone dancing before Winston finally got them to stop, much to a chorus of disappointment.

Torbjorn Lindholm answered his call from his workshop at home and immediately went into a grouchy rant directed at no one in particular about how he didn't like to be interrupted before Brigitte stopped his tangent, leading the rest of the team to collectively sigh in relief.

Mei-Ling Zhou was at the summit of a glacier in Greenland gathering data for a paper she was writing on shifts in the North Atlantic Current. No sooner had she joined the conversation when the mountain of ice underneath her shuddered and splintered, but quick thinking and quicker usage of her ice gun did well to stabilize everything, an act that earned her applause and cheers from the rest of the team, which she accepted with blushing cheeks and a shy face.

Jesse McCree, meanwhile, was just getting off a twelve-hour flight that he'd spent stowed away in a commercial jet airliner in order to avoid being caught by the air marshal. He grumbled something about his hat getting crushed and going too long without a cigarette before he'd realized the screen was on, only to find half the team exchanging smirks with each other. Thankfully, the cowboy had never been one to get flustered over a joke.

Echo and Sojourn both answered on the same camera, but only long enough to apologize that they were in the middle of taking care of a Null Sector contingent in Warsaw and that they were sorry they had to pass. Since their screen showed plasma shots whizzing past their heads as they spoke, no one blamed them. Offers were made to help them out, but they both assured the rest of the team they had it under control, wishing everyone good luck just before cutting their feed.

Even Efi Oladele, the child from Numbani who'd built an Omnic that beat Doomfist hand-to-hand, answered the call from her workshop - Or rather Orisa, the robot herself, did, attempting to test out her newest updates on how to engage in small talk before Efi could peer in, make sure everyone wasn't left feeling profoundly uncomfortable, and apologize that she couldn't make it due to a scheduling conflict with her family's Sunday dinner. With Lucio's permission though and after multiple 'thank you's', she triumphantly called to her mother that she had to keep the rest of her weekend open in order to help Overwatch prepare for their next big mission. Her mother, though, did convince her to leave a Junie behind to record the conversation while her and Orisa were taken shopping for new clothes.

The last one to join the conversation was Genji Shimada. When the Japanese cyborg ninja's call was finally answered, showing himself inside his quarters at the Shambali monastery in Nepal, he didn't even have the time to breathe a single word before he was met with a chorus of cheers, applause, and whistles.

"You're the real hero here! Mondatta would be proud to see you now," Tracer said earnestly.

"Thank you, Lena. My master Zenyatta said the same thing to me earlier today," Genji replied.

"If I were there, I'd give you a medal," Fareeha said.

"You done good back there," McCree added in.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Torbjorn muttered. "but you didn't do half bad talkin' with those Omnics, Genji,".

"Hold the phone; Did Torbjorn just give a compliment?" Tracer asked, her eyes widening and her face taking an expression that combined surprise and laughter at once.

"I've never heard him do that," Mei answered, genuinely bewildered.

"Dude, who are you and what've you done with the real Torbs?" Lucio joked. "You got your own Junie going over there that we don't see? I dunno guys, he sounds a bit Finnish to be the real deal."

"For the last time, I'm SWEDISH!" Torbjorn shouted back. "And I wouldn't let it go to your head if I were you."

"It is alright. I am comfortable knowing I have acted on behalf of peace and that my actions honour those who care most about me," Genji replied solemnly.

"Speaking of which," Winston interjected. "Would you be able to get in touch with Angela? I heard she was representing the Red Cross at the gala."

" _YA_! She deserves our congratulations as much as you do!" Reinhardt declared.

"I actually have an announcement to tell you all." Genji replied. His voice was less clear than usual, now coloured somewhat by nervousness, but he adopted a confident stance and continued onward. "I recently asked Dr. Zeigler if she would be my date to the gala and..."

Genji paused for a moment, his eyes showing his nervousness again. The rest of Overwatch looked on with growing anticipation. Tracer in particular was on the edge of her seat, having been a confidant for both of them during the Golden Age, when Angela had kept her true feelings to herself out of a sense of professionalism and he had seen himself as too damaged to ever find happiness. Now, with Genji having found his peace and him being Angela's patient no longer, Tracer had hoped that they'd give each other a chance as something more.

Genji took a prosthetic hand to his forehead and wiped a bead of sweat off. Taking a deep breath, he continued on. "...she accepted."

The revelation was met with another chorus of cheers and applause.

"I knew you could do it!" Tracer congratulated, giving Genji a thumbs-up.

"Thank you, Lena. We have also been preparing a speech together that we will give during the ceremonies," he replied.

"That sounds great! I'd love to hear it," Mei said.

"I'd actually like to see you two there as well," Fareeha added.

"Actually, that's kind of the reason why I asked about Angela." Winston cut in. "In fact, it's the reason why I called all of you today."

The gorilla scientist's serious tone caught the attention of all the cast present. Their elation at the recent developments was paused like a film and their looks of joy turned to ones of concern.

Winston continued on. "Null Sector's still active, but we haven't seen or heard anything from Talon in almost a year now. They haven't been this quiet since, well, ever. Athena and I assume that they're planning something huge to have gone this covert, but we don't know what; it could be a bomb or an EMP or a hostage situation or something else entirely. I know it's something we've never really tried before, but I propose that we do an undercover mission into the gala at Versailles, discover Talon's plan, and put a stop to it before they can undermine the peace treaty."

The de facto leader of the motley group's words held resonance among them. Though his inexperience was evident, his resolve was as true as anything Jack Morrison had said in a speech during the Golden Age.

"Makes sense," McCree chimed in first. "With Genji and the doc at the party, Reyes'll be itching to show up and crash it."

"Sounds like something Widowmaker would try to get into as well," added Tracer.

"We can't go in unprepared; there's too much at stake," urged Winston. "I've got an idea on what we could do, but I was hoping to hear your ideas too,"

"Of course! I will make sure that Talon's dastardly hands are not laid on anyone ever again!" Reinhardt exclaimed.

"Actually, not everyone will be able to go; too large a group would attract too much attention."

"Oh... alright then," Reinhardt frowned, his enthusiasm dampening slightly. It wasn't too long before he was back to his old self again, however. "But I will still be ready to fight with HONOUR if you need me!"

"Right now, I'm going to need you all here as soon as possible so we can go over the details. Athena's got the Orcas on the way to pick up everyone we need, and I'll be in touch with the rest of you. I'll see you all soon," Winston said with a smile. His words were met with approval and one by one, the images all turned to black again and the sound lines cut from their high peaks to perfectly flat once again.

All of them, except one.

"Genji, before you go, are you sure that you can get Angela to help out? I don't think we can do this without her," Winston stated, his smile fading away.

"I am not," the cyborg ninja answered. "She is still bitter about the frustrations of the old days. After the last negotiations ended, she said to me that 'the last remnants of the old Overwatch had been swept away'."

"I need you to try, please. This could mean saving thousands of lives. I'll even help you if you'd like me to."

"Your generous offer is accepted, my friend. I will contact you again soon," After that, Genji's image disappeared.

Winston sat back on the tire that served as his chair and sighed. As he stretched out his arms and legs, he looked up at the headboard just above the screen to the row of pictures that were held onto the edge with thumbtacks. His eyes were drawn to the picture in the very middle, one that showed an infant Winston alongside Dr. Harold, both smiling happily.

Fond memories raced through Winston's mind of his time with the lunar scientist before coming to a stop on a familiar one. He could still hear his father's voice on the day that the then-young ape was first shown the colony's observatory, and learned the most important piece of advice of all. " _Never accept the world as it appears to be,_ " Dr. Harold had said. " _Dare to see it for what it could be_."

The words echoed through Winston's mind as he reached up and grasped the picture with his index finger and thumb. He said softly to the image "Thank you," before heading off to his workshop in the main room below to await the arrival of his friends.


	3. One Helluva Night

Just as Winston had requested, the entire roster of the reformed Overwatch had congregated at Gibraltar by the end of the day. But before preparations could begin, there was one last piece of business to carry out.

Angela was in the midst of taking a short coffee break at her not-for-profit clinic in Oasis when she answered her call and the holo-screen opened. "Well well, isn't this a surprise?" she said. "I didn't think I'd see the two of you so soon."

Winston smiled nervously as Genji leaned in. "Or perhaps," he whispered. "too long?

The doctor blushed as she brushed back her hair. "Don't tell me you were hoping to catch me dress shopping for tomorrow night?" she flirted.

"Such would be dishonourable of me, and in truth I do not know what I would say if I did."

"Actually," Winston chimed in. "I asked him to call you. It's about the gala, in fact."

Angela's expression and body language turned cold as stone in an instant. "Make it quick," she spat.

Winston exchanged a quick look of surprise with Genji; He'd thought that his friend had been overstating just how bitter she remained after her departure. As it turned out, if anything, he had said the least. "Well, you see, um..." He paused briefly to collect his thoughts. "We - the team, that is - were hoping to get inside the gala. We think that Talon will try to sabotage the talks, and so we - again, the team - want to-"

"Just swoop in, punch everything that points a gun at you, and be carried off victorious on the shoulders of the dignitaries, yes?" Angela remarked, her vitriol thinly veiled by sarcasm. "Is that it?"

Winston stuttered further, even more taken aback. "Uh, no, no. Not at all. The whole reason why we need to be at Versailles is so that we can save lives."

"Of course. It's always been 'to save lives', but have you ever considered that there just may be innocent lives that will be taken when the shooting starts?"

"I've got a plan for that. We could really use your help on it and who knows, maybe you'll-"

"Maybe I'll what? Rejoin a team that couldn't see past its own nose for twenty years and still won't learn from its mistakes?!" Angela snapped. At this point, she realized that her temper, which had rarely been seen until these past couple of years, was beginning to boil over. Taking a moment to recompose herself, she crossed one arm over her stomach, placed her free hand on her temple, and looked down at her feet.

"I'm sorry," she said, though her words had more of a self-defensive tone to them than a regretful one. "I've just... I've just moved on from Overwatch. All my life, I've seen people say they were going to save lives, but when the fighting started..." She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Genji could see that she was stifling tears back as Winston looked over at him again, silently asking for his help.

"Dr. Ziegler, I know that this will be hard," he said softly, catching her attention again. "but I have faith that we can keep the peace we have worked on together."

Angela looked up at the screen in front of her and saw her former patient's face. Even under his silver faceplate and green-glowing visor, she knew the compassion that was in his eyes.

"This is a chance to save lives that would otherwise be destroyed. After tonight, the war between humans and Omnics will no longer hurt anyone." He paused for a moment as Angela's sad bitterness slowly began to fade, lightening up as his words echoed through her head.

"Besides, who would be my date to the gala if you didn't go?".

A smile spread across Angela's face. "All right, I guess I owe you that much," she chuckled. She then turned to look at Winston, her expression stoic and her tone coloured by a pain that cut deep. "Just please, promise me that no one will die."

Winston's lips pursed with determination as he looked Angela straight in the eye. "I promise."

* * *

To keep his word required careful planning, and so that's what they did.

The preparation was broken down into three aspects: Infiltration, Surveillance, and Defensive Action. As such, first came the issue of choosing who would attend. As much as Reinhardt protested until Brigitte talked him down, it was agreed that the best choices to infiltrate the gala would be Tracer, McCree, and Fareeha, a team that could fill all the required roles as well as provide an excellent blend of tactical acumen, ease of blending in, speed, and firepower.

With that out of the way, next came surveillance. With Talon's game plan for the event unknown, the ability to keep an eye on things from ground level and from above. With that in mind, it was agreed that Tracer and McCree would go undercover as a remote camera crew, holo-streaming the gala on behalf of an independent news network. From a control panel in the back of the main ballroom that most of the gala would take place in, the two of them would have control over a half-dozen camera drones, saucer-sized products of Winston and Efi's shared love of tinkering that would autonomously buzz around wherever the main crowd, high-definition cameras on the hunt for anything out of the ordinary. As such, Winston and Athena would be remotely watching over the drone feed as well, providing extra sets of eyes from afar to ensure nothing was missed.

Fareeha, as she discovered when she inquired as to why she didn't get a forged press pass, would be responsible for outside reconnaissance, though her mood rather quickly swung upwards at the notion. Recent developments to expand Paris' economy meant that there were several buildings directly on the edge of the palace grounds, which would allow her to do a continual circle around the perimeter with her Raptora armour, jumping from rooftop to rooftop and scanning the grounds from a bird's-eye view, a task made easy thanks to several sensor upgrades made to her suit by Torbjorn - albeit with begrudging assistance from a girl just under a fifth of his age.

Something that went hand in hand with both blending in and peering in, meanwhile, was appearances. Disguises came easy; even after refusing to relinquish his hat for the night, McCree looked decidedly less conspicuous in an Italian jacket and shoulder holster than a poncho and gun belt, while a short time rooting through her old wardrobe of t-shirts plastered with punk band logos and torn jeans provided Tracer with everything she needed, though it didn't come without a degree of mild teasing on the part of her teammates.

In the end, however, all the watching and waiting wouldn't be worth anything if they weren't able to mobilize at a moment's notice, but even so a promise was a promise, and averting violence if possible was immediately deemed paramount. Every member would be on standby, but direct contact between the guest members and the infiltrators was decided to be nonexistent. Due to Overwatch's position as an illegal organization and Angela and Lucio's positions as figures officially outside the team, they couldn't afford to be seen together at a secure event whose guest list included half the politicians and military personnel who had signed the Petras Act.

Finally, it was determined that Angela, Genji, and Lucio, though they would all be able to easily access their combat gear if the need arose, would attend the event as usual, acting as though they had no idea of any sort of plot or of Overwatch's presence, the idea being that not only would it help to keep the crowd calm and potentially lure any Talon operatives into the open, but also to hide their backup plan in plain sight.  
Within the preceding day's final hours, Angela presented the idea that she would keep a small clutch with her at the event. Tucked away inside would be a collapsible miniature version of her Caduceus Staff. Should any or even all of the guests be killed or injured, she would activate it, allowing for her to save them from a potentially damning fate. The request for the modification made an already grouchy Torbjorn even more so, but the piece was completed with just enough time to spare before the team set to depart and everyone else went their separate ways again.

Winston, however, didn't watch the ship leave in person, choosing rather to monitor its launch from the console with a level of intent that didn't go unnoticed.

"You seem tense," Athena said, breaking his concentration. "Is there something wrong?"

The ape stretched, trying to rid himself of the sudden tightness he could feel behind his ribcage. "Nothing really," he answered, only to catch himself when he realized that the A.I. wasn't going to believe him. "It's just that the last time we tried anything like this was back in the Golden Age, when Jack was leading the team. There's a big difference between winning a fight and stopping one before it happens."

"His success was never because of just one person. Based on the amount of planning we did, I calculate this mission will be successful with or without Commander Morrison."

The trouble on Winston's brow lightened, but as the news feeds continued to cover what lay just ahead his face and thoughts stayed concerned. "I hope so, Athena," he said. "I hope so."

* * *

By the time the _Orca_ touched down just outside of the palace and its passengers filed out, the previous thirty-two hours felt like no time at all.

Likewise, the time on the ground wasn't wasted. Fareeha, as planned, immediately took up her perimeter sweep, using the suit's rocket boosters to float from the top of one building to the next, surveying the area for a few minutes, and then repeating the process. Lucio, as the M.C., went to rehearsing his script for the night and doing some last-minute tweaks to the musical presentation he had prepared for halfway through.

Tracer and McCree, meanwhile, shouldered the duffel bags containing the drone equipment, setting forth to attend to their internal matter. No sooner had they walked in when their eyes were turned upwards by the sheer extravagance of the room. Solid marble pillars towered from end to end, and it seemed as though every inch of what was in between from floor to ceiling was coated in the glint of gold, the sheen of a silver mirror, or decorated with some priceless fixture of another kind.

"Something catch your eye?" Tracer asked, tapping McCree's shoulder as she noticed a funny look on his face.

"Ah, nothin' in particular," he answered nonchalantly. "Just kinda wonderin' what whoever made this was thinkin' when they decided to make one helluva shiny lookin' room."

Tracer laughed. "Well, beats me! Could've been anything, I imagine. Either way, it's one helluva room for one helluva night." She gestured for him to follow her to the remote control center at the back of the ballroom as she ran past him. "Now c'mon, I'll race you!"

The cowboy laughed as she ran past him, briefly putting on a sprint before slowing down as she won handily. Within a few minutes of both of them reaching the panel, the drones were unfurled, fully charged, and silently buzzing around the ballroom as the duo made the last few calibrations.

"You getting these pictures, Winston?" Tracer said, talking into a microphone that fed back to him as she reached into a duffel bag and withdrew her chronal accelerator.

"Clear as day," he affirmed.

Tracer then, with the push of a button, changed the image on Winston's screen to her and McCree standing behind their panel. "Just one last thing though: How did you say I could miniaturize this thing?" She held up the accelerator in front of the panel for the gorilla to see on his screen back in Gibraltar.

Winston let out an frustrated sigh. "For the last time, you need to turn the outer cover counter-clockwise thirty degrees, push it inward, and then press the button at the southeast corner of the center-"

Tracer laughed. "Just faffing with you, love. I got it the first time," A second later, the accelerator's outer covering of hard plastic and fiberglass had receded into the area between the chest and backpieces, cutting the diameter in half. She placed it underneath the table that the control panel rested on, an opaque covering that draped over the edge keeping the device from sight.

"Heads up: Guests are coming in. You might want to get the cameras out front," came Fareeha's voice over the mic, calm and commanding.

"Right on it!" Tracer replied eagerly.  
Over her shoulder, McCree flashed a grin. "Cocked, locked, and ready to rock."

With practiced speed, a few button pushes, and the gentle usage of the joystick, the drones flew out of the room towards where the action had begun, electric and organic eyes alike peeled.

* * *

The scene out front bustled with activity just as much as it crackled with anticipation. Leading up to the gates was a long red carpet, unfurled and serving as a pathway into the palace's immaculate confines. Velvet ropes guarded by security personnel lined the carpet all the way up to the main gates, restraining the immense crowd of journalists and elated celebrators, each one attempting to make their questions and cheers heard above all others. Around the entrance, the night was warm and a full moon illuminated everything within its gaze. The gold decorations of the gates reflected its radiance upon the red carpet and those walking it, giving them a shimmering glow. Off to the east, however, a bank of dark clouds could be just seen hanging over the horizon. The air, while warm in the vicinity of the palace, had a small breeze that carried a sharp, piercing chill around with it.

At the beginning of the red carpet, a long line of limousines lined, up one after the other as though it were a train pulling into a station. A small army of doormen and valets, both human and Omnic, stood at the ready to park the vehicles and receive the guests. As each vehicle glided up to the entrance, out stepped their esteemed contents: A veritable who's-who of celebrities, politicians, dignitaries, military personnel, and representatives of over a hundred major organizations and corporate entities.

As the arrivals continued, a P.A. system suddenly made its activation known. The crowd collectively craned their heads to see where the noise was coming from.

In French, a deep bass voice began to speak. "Ladies and gentlemen, we would now like to present our guests of honour: The negotiators who have made the celebration tonight possible through their work and commitment to peace."

The crowd erupted into a collective cheer as the next limousine came to a halt at the red carpet and the door to the passenger compartment opened.

"Our first arrivals, who are here on behalf of the Shambali and the Red Cross, respectively, are Genji Shimada and Dr. Angela Zeigler, MD and Ph.D."

To a round of applause and cheers Genji stepped out first, wearing a black silk robe with a silver dragon emblazoned on the shoulders, while his short sword and katana were fastened to his belt. The outfit, when combined with his faceplate, helmet, tall figure, and the iridescent green glow coming from the long, thin eye slit of his visor, gave him an air of regality and dignity that attracted oohs, ahs, and camera flashes from up and down the red carpet.

Genji then turned back in the direction of the limousine's open door and extended his left hand. In a single fluid motion, Angela's hand met his as he stepped to one side, allowing her to elegantly remove herself from the vehicle and stand on the carpet. Her dress was immaculate: A shoulder-less white evening gown, inspired by those worn by old movie stars, that glistened under the moonlight and sparkled as journalists turned their camera's attention to her. Her hands wore white elbow-length gloves and her platinum blonde hair, usually held back in a ponytail, was let down to her shoulders where it curled at the ends. Where the cyborg had garnered a warm reception, the arrival of an angel at the gilded gates earned a full chorus and twice as many pictures taken. Back at the control panel, Tracer gasped and clasped her hands together in front of her chest in excitement for her friend, while McCree raised an eyebrow and quietly whistled as his pupils fixated on Angela's image coming from the camera drones.

Genji, meanwhile, was thankful that the crowd was fixated on Angela's stunning beauty, because the mere sight of her left him feeling as though he was about to lose control over his faculties and fall to the ground in a pool of jelly. It didn't take long, however, to bring himself back to his senses.

"You look wonderful, Genji," Angela whispered as they walked through the gates.

"And you look l-li-lik-like a..." He wanted to say she looked like an angel, but his tongue seemed to lose all coherence as he looked into her shimmering blue eyes.

Angela chuckled. "It's OK, just say what comes to your mind."

Genji inhaled deeply and mustered all the courage he had inside himself. After a few moments, he said softly to her "You look as beautiful as ever."

Angela lightly placed a hand over her mouth as she blushed. "Thank you." she replied, almost smitten.

With all the courage he could muster, Genji offered her an arm, tucking his hand close to his chest to hide that it was shaking. Angela graciously accepted and the two strode down the red carpet, turning every head in view of them.

As they walked through the open doors of the palace, Angela planted a soft kiss on his cheek, leaving behind a small stain of ruby lipstick. Internally, he struggled to keep himself from hyperventilating.

The entrance led them to a grand open room, with centuries-old artwork on the walls and the glint of gold coming from every angle. Above them, ornate chandeliers broadcast their radiant light throughout the room, which reflected off the countless decorative mirrors and made the room look even larger and brighter than it was. Turning around just at the doors, the two spared a bow to the crowd and a wave at the camera drones before entering the lavish halls leading to the ballroom.

But even amongst the camera flashes and prying eyes, something remained out of sight.

Off to the left, just concealed by the open doors in an area where the light did not quite reach, stood a haunting, feminine figure. Her legs were impossibly long, almost spider-like in their appearance. She wore a deep purple sleeveless dress of fine silk, detailed impeccably with a subtle pattern of black lilies and cut just above where her nylon stockings ended, and on her wrists and upper arm hung ornate golden bands. Her face was blanketed by pale makeup, creating an eerie trio alongside her long raven hair and thin, icy lips.  
Her most chilling feature, however, was her eyes. Already an unnatural shade of dusty brown, they were permanently fixed in a stare that seemed to penetrate through to one's very soul and yet had nothing behind themselves: No heart, no emotion, no soul of their own. Overall, she had the look of someone beautiful, but twisted by someone or something, her beauty combined with something truly evil.

The woman raised two fingers to her left ear, turning on her comlink. Her voice was a musky, French-accented purr as unfeeling as everything else about her. "The guests of honour have arrived."

* * *

On a rooftop on the opposite side of where Fareeha's patrol had her, a thick black mist swept in from out of nowhere before coming to a halt at the edge of the roof, overlooking the gates to the palace. The mist slowly turned in a corkscrew pattern upward before dissipating, leaving in its place a revenant, a ghost bent on revenge and destruction: the Reaper.

Ten feet to the left of where he stood, a scraggly destitute took notice of him. Holding out a small plastic cup, the tramp asked the dark figure in front of him " _S'il vous plait, monsieur? As-tu de l'argent_?"

Reaper's only acknowledgement of the vagrant's existence was to draw a shotgun and fire a single round that took his head clean off and made the lifeless body step back a few feet before crumpling like a ragdoll into a corner. As he returned the shotgun to its holster underneath his overcoat, he placed two fingers on his hood where his right ear would be and spoke with a raspy growl. "Good. Keep an eye out for any other Overwatch agents. The doctor and her pet won't be here alone."

"Affirmative. Widowmaker out," she replied.

Reaper then pressed his earpiece again, opening up a new channel. "Kowalski, are your men in position?"

"We got 'security guards' on patrol around the building and covering the interior. When you make the call, those schmucks at the party won't have nowhere to go."

"Drop the attitude," Reaper barked. "If something goes wrong, I'll be holding you accountable. Now keep radio chatter down until the next check-in."

Kowalski's smug tone shriveled up and died in an instant. "Yes sir, boss," he squeaked before the channel closed with a brief static whine.

Seething through his teeth, Reaper peered down at the gates from his perch. Limousines continued to stream in and dignitaries continued to make their way inside the palace, camera drones capturing their every step and people and Omnics jostling for position to sing their praises or snap a photo. Each and every one of the dignitaries was despicable, arrogant, and self-entitled, standing in the way of the world's true direction and deserving of every painful second of their fate.

At least, that's what the powers that be thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out two people strolling through a corridor lined by gigantic windows. Though they were mere specks in the distance, the lights surrounding the palace illuminated them clearly. Through the eyes of his mask, he could clearly make out in the window that the two figures were Genji and Angela, strolling through the palace and taking in its spectacle.

The revenant curled his right hand into a tight fist. The peace talks, the gala, the Grand Design, none of that was worth a damn to him. Overwatch and its reformation, however, was different. Like Montresor, he claimed a thousand injuries and insults done against himself and like Edmond Dantes, he had worked for decades to destroy those who had wronged him. A deal with the original Doomfist, The Saviour, had set in motion a twenty-year undermining of Overwatch, right under their noses. In the end, he had come tantalizingly close to completing it, only to have it stolen from his deserving hands by a select few members of a team that didn't know when to quit and, most infuriatingly, by the man who had done him the greatest insult of all: Jack Morrison.

Ever since then, closing the matter was his singular obsession, and with the power he had at his disposal it was almost too easy, even if they had slipped out of his grasp a few select times ever since the team reunited. Still, regardless of ease, Overwatch agents were Overwatch agents and they needed to die. ALL of them.

"Are you just going to stand there and brood all night? If you are then fine, I'll just complete the mission myself then. It'll go a lot smoother, that's for certain," a voice from out of thin air interrupted. Its tone was mocking, condescending, and featured a Mexican accent.

Reaper seethed in anger and slowly cranked his head to his right. Two feet away, a lavender outline of a woman in a cyberpunk jacket materialized and was filled in, revealing Sombra as the source of the voice.   
He tightened his fist to the point where his hand shook and the metal claws at the end of his gauntlet-ed fingers dug into what little flesh was left. Ever since he'd first met the hacker in Paraguaty in the final months of the Golden Age, he had known her first and foremost to be a royal pain in the ass. Though her skills and enhancements made her competent, she was flippant, cocky, unprofessional, and sarcastic, never passing up on an opportunity to annoy himself and Widowmaker, fly in the face of their authority, and flaunt her self-proclaimed cleverness, even though her extra-curricular "friend-making" wasn't quite as unseen as she had thought. Worst of all, Doomfist knew about her attitude and independence and still gave her a long leash, a slap in the face to his professionalism almost as intolerable as any Overwatch had thrown at him.

"I don't have time for this," he growled, his shoulders tensing at her mere presence.

Sensing an exposed nerve, she pounced. "Ooh, are we a little touchy tonight, Gabe? Not even a hello for your _mejor amiga_? Even by your standards that's edgy."

In an instant, Reaper whirled around and snatched the collar of her jacket, wrenching it and pulling her close enough to him that she could see into the black voids that filled the place where his eyes should have been. Through the open area under the pointed line around the nose area that evoked the image of a skeleton's nose, his words seemed to give a ghostly echo. " _Don't_. _Test_. _Me_."

Despite the intimidating move he'd made, Sombra's attitude was unchanged. "Yeah, I get it; you're under a lot of pressure, you don't want to make yourself look _estupido_ in front of what could be half of Overwatch, and you've got the boss breathing down your neck. I'm sure it would get to anyone, especially if they had your kind of baggage to carry around on top of it."

She stared into his soulless eyes with a look that dared him to retaliate. Reaper wrenched her jacket collar even tighter, but it did nothing to faze her. After a few more seconds he finally relinquished his grip, pushing her backwards in the process. She stumbled back a few feet, but caught herself quickly.

Reaper turned back towards the gates, clasping his hands tightly behind his back so that they wouldn't reach back out and violently throttle the Mexican irritant. Back down below, the last of the dignitaries were exiting their limousines, braving the mass surrounding the entrance, and promenading down the red carpet to the confines of the palace. "You'd better have the EMP ready," he snarled.

A cocky grin spread across Sombra's face. "Oh ye of little faith, Gabe." From a coat pocket, she produced a purple cylindrical device about a foot and a half long with three small spikes at one end. Pressing a button, the display panel on the top created an image of a pixelized lavender sugar skull.

Reaper didn't bother to look. If there was one thing he could say about Sombra that wasn't dripping with contempt, it was that she didn't slack on the technological aspects of the job. "And what about the hired assets?"

" _El rata y el puerco_? Practically begging to be let loose. They were giddy when I told them their job."

"Keep them in line until I give the word. Once their job's done, let me know immediately. In the meantime, set the EMP. Don't activate it until everything's ready."

She gave a confident smile in return and a mocking salute before the lavender outline that had accompanied her arrival did the same for her disappearance.

Reaper raised his head back up, turning it over to where she'd been and sighing with an aggravated relief as a few silent seconds confirmed that she wasn't waiting to pull another joke on him. By the time he gazed back down, the limousines had come and gone, the dignitaries had all gone inside, and security was guarding the doors, making sure the multitudes couldn't pour inside as well.

The time was up for sitting around, the revenant knew. There were other places to be and things to do.

Even so, as Reaper dissipated back into the mist, what Sombra had said came to mind; If she was right and half of Overwatch had indeed showed up, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clear some names off the list. At the notion, he felt a growing feeling of murderous anticipation.

It was going to be one helluva night, and if he could help it, nothing would stop him this time.


	4. The Night's Still Young

The party began without a hitch.

Over the course of a half an hour, the guests streamed their way into the ballroom, filling out the tables that were set across the open space and filling the air with a general din of chatter to accompany the classical melodies that played from the loudspeakers. The drones flew in alongside them, circling around the room and weaving between pillars, settling into a pattern that took them from one side of the room to another and back and forth.

"Well, ain't they a happy couple?" McCree remarked as one of the drones focused on Genji and Angela in the midst of a vibrant conversation.

Tracer looked down at her monitor, smiling as she noticed what he'd pointed out. "I know, right? If they were any more adorable I'd go down there and tell them myself."

"Speakin' of which, I don't mean to pry but, you an' Emily ever figured 'bout tyin' the knot?"

Tracer jolted up in her seat, laughing nervously as the question took her aback. "I mean, we've been a little busy the last while, and even then, well..." She scratched the back of her neck. "I mean, um..."

"OK everyone," Winston interrupted. "this is it. We can do this if we work together and don't let our guard down. Can I get a last-minute check?"

"Feed from the drones is still good," McCree said. At the same time he sent a repentant look over Tracer's way as so to silently ask for no hard feelings, to which she acknowledged and accepted with a warm smile. Her own feelings aside, she knew there wasn't any malice behind his words.

'It's the same back here in Gibraltar. You did a good job setting them up."

"Well, we did have an expert helping us out," Tracer added. Her remark made Winston feel a sense of pride.

From outside on the buildings at the palace's perimeter, Fareeha reported in. "It's pretty normal out here. The crowd's still at the gate trying to get a closer look and the stage in the gardens is crawling with technicians. I'll keep on doing a sweep and alert you as soon as I see something."

"Lucio, Angela, and Genji are on radio silence, so we're just about to begin. I'll be checking in again in an hour or so." He paused and took a long, slow breath. Before the channel and the screen faded out, his words were quiet, but hopeful. "Good luck everyone."

No sooner had Winston cut out when the lights in the ballroom dimmed and the deep, French-speaking voice on the PA system from earlier came to life. "Esteemed dignitaries, please give a warm welcome tonight's esteemed Master of Ceremonies; Lucio Correia dos Santos!"

As the voice stopped talking, the curtains on the stage drew back and Lucio strode out, a spotlight following him from stage left to the mic stand. The dignitaries gave their applause as he stopped and adjusted the mic. "Thank you, thank you all for that; You're too kind. Now, before we go any further, I'm gonna set down the ground rule that I promise I won't shamelessly plug my next album-" He sped up his voice for comedic effect. "- _comingoutthisSeptemberandavailableforholo-downloadaweekearly_."

Laughter echoed around the ballroom before changing to cheers, to which he fanned by spreading his arms wide and gesturing for more before backing off as the round died down.  
"So how's everybody doing tonight? I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking at the hors d'oeuvres and thinking 'Dude, cheese and wine? Way to point out we're in Paris. I think the Eiffel Tower already gave us the idea'."

The crowd's response this time was light, but Lucio played off it. "I mean, at least Brazil has unpronounceable berries and nuts that they name countries after, y'know what I'm saying?"

This follow-up joke was better received, which allowed him to further capitalize.

"Thank you, thank you. Don't worry, I'll get to the rest later; England I'm looking at you."

In the back, Tracer snickered.

"So anyways, I just wanna thank you all for coming out and for asking me to join you here in this beautiful city and in this incredible old palace. Tons of crazy things happened in this place over the years; Y'know Louis XIV once dressed up like a tree for a party here? No kidding. Makes me kinda wonder what everyone else thought." He shuffled from side to side as though he were acting out multiple roles in a play all at once.  
"' _Oh hey, you seen Louis lately?_ '"  
"' _No. What about him?_ '"  
"' _Well_ , _I'_ _m not sure. I he's acting a bit wooden, if you ask me.'"_

The crowd burst into laughter, on which the showman further capitalized. "On the other hand, the man met one of his mistresses at that party, so I guess you could say trees have got it where it counts."

The dignitaries all laughed again as Lucio took a bow, dreadlocks drooping over his head. After he brushed them back, he calmed down the crowd with the raise of his hands.  
"Now, let's get serious for a moment," he said, his voice dropping low as he leaned in close to the mic. "Why're we all here?"

The crowd was silent for a few seconds before he answered his own question. "I'm just guessing, but I think we're here because we all believe in a dream, a dream where we get to see the day where everybody, Omnic and human, can stand side by side without worrying if someone is going to try to hurt them just for existing. Personally, I think it's a dream worth fighting for; Whaddaya say?"

No sooner had he gone silent when the room erupted with cheers and whistles. Lucio spread his arms out wide and gestured as though to say 'I can't hear you', prompting greater applause. By the time the noise finally settled down enough for him to continue, almost a full minute had passed.

"Well, I dunno about you guys, but I think that judging by the fact that we're here right now, that dream is finally coming true!" More cheers came from the assemblage as Lucio took another bow.

"OK, so we got about an hour to ease ourselves in," he said. "get to know each other outside a summit hall. We even got a dance floor to kick it on and don't worry, it's all yours. Same time they'll be serving up a five-star dinner as well and since it's Paris, you know it's gonna be good. After that, I'm inviting all of y'all out to the gardens where I got a special something I put together just for the occasion. No spoilers, but it's gonna be epic!" He pumped his fists in the air, hyping up the crowd into more applause that he next spoke over.  
"Once that's done, we'll be back in here and capping off the night with a few words from some of the heroes who made this all possible. How's that for a party, huh?!"

Lucio stepped back for a moment as the room gave him a standing ovation. He spread his arms wide and grinned wider, . His eyes quickly moved around the room; at the very front, Angela and Genji were part of the standing ovation. At the very back, Tracer was whistling loudly in excitement while McCree tipped his hat.

Lucio stepped back forward to the mic stand as the applause began to soften. "Y'all start things off right and I'll be meeting up with you in a couple hours. Don't go too crazy without me; The night's still young!" With the ovation the loudest it had gotten, Lucio dropped the mic and moonwalked off the stage as the curtains drew closed and the lights raised.

In the back, McCree smirked as he raised an eyebrow. "I gotta admit," he said. "man's got style."

"Really?" Tracer replied, her own face expressing a teasing surprise. "Seems a little un-country for you."

"Hey, easy now. All I said was he's got style. It don't mean I'm all of a sudden gonna pick up the album. Besides," He pointed down at her shirt and the picture of a man smashing a bass guitar on its front. "ain't that one of yer punk bands you got a bunch of vinyl of there?"

"Alright, alright, fair point," she laughed. "Now c'mon, we'd better get to work."

"Good with me."

With that, the two of them turned back to the matter at hand. Even with time to kill, there was none of it to lose.

And they intended on keeping it that way.

* * *

As the hour progressed, the ballroom's activity grew more and more lively. Dignitaries and honoured guests exchanged pleasantries and broke bread, some of the more adventurous - and inebriated - attendees tried their moves on the dance floor, and servers maneuvered through the crowds with glasses of fine wine, plates of hors d'oeuvres, and gourmet dishes of various delectable entrees. The glittering decorations on the walls and ceiling further served to glamourize the night, which when combined with a skylight that cast the glistening moon and the dazzle of the stars above across the floor in a thousand patterns gave a sense of magic few could ignore. Tracer noticed Angela pointing it out to Genji before the latter took hold of her hand and dipped her as though the two were dancing. As he lifted her back up and the music changed, she grabbed his hand back and spirited them off towards the dance floor.

"Dr. Zeigler, I am not so sure about this," he said warily.

"Oh but Genji, do you hear what they're playing?" she replied, an excited anticipation marking her voice. "It's the Blue Danube. We simply have to dance!"

Genji froze in place, trying to find the words that would get him out of this situation. "B-but I do not know how to dance, and even if I did I do not think I would be any good at it."

Angela, however, was unfazed. "You'll love it, I'm sure. The waltz is meant to be easy to learn. I'll even lead until you get the hang of it."

Genji tried to refute her, but instead found himself standing awkwardly in front of his date as words failed him. After a few seconds of trying to say something, anything, he hung his head and sighed in resignation. When he finally gathered himself enough to speak again, the only words that he could muster were "Very well."

" _Wunderbar_!" She pulled him in amidst the crowd, nearly toppling him off balance in the process, though she caught him as they began their slow circle. "You needn't worry, Genji," she cooed, guiding his free hand onto her lower back before wrapping hers behind his neck. "Soon you'll be having the time of your life. I promise."

* * *

While the party went on, at least two people were all business.

Tracer rested her head on one hand, propped up on the panel by her elbow, while McCree scratched a divot into the plastic surrounding the screens with the index finger on his metal arm. Thus far the drones hadn't found anything suspicious, but that wasn't to say that there wasn't anything to find at all. Their eyes remained glued to the camera feeds as their sources continued to buzz around; The smallest slip-up or oversight had the potential for disastrous consequences, so diligence was key at all times, no matter how little seemed to be happening.

Or how boring it felt.

"Move Camera Two over to the west end and focus in on the group by the door?" Tracer asked to her colleague.

"Already on it," he responded. With the press of a button on the control panel and the slight movement of a joystick, the associated drone glided silently and effortlessly through the air before easing to a halt above a small congregation of dignitaries as they clinked wine glasses and chattered about topics unknown.

"You see anyone there? I'm not recognizin' any familiar faces," McCree inquired.

"Athena's not picking up any Talon agents on the facial scanner," Winston answered. "We'll just have to keep looking. There has to be someone here."

"Makes sense. Large area, lots of people spread around, plenty a' idle time. No one'd be expecting anything to happen."

"Except for us," Tracer chimed in. "The mixer's almost over and we haven't found anything yet. You think it's possible they got scared off? We are kind of doing this on just a guess, after all."

McCree shot a skeptical look at her. "I figure I know Reyes better than just about anyone. He'll be here, even if he's not goin' to be shootin' things up just yet. Hell, he could be tryin' to scope us out like what we're doing right now," he said with a tone that almost seemed to indicate that her question had unsettled him.

"If he was, are you sure we wouldn't have seen it by now?" Tracer replied. She'd asked a genuine question, but her tone was inflicted with a challenge. "I don't remember Reyes being that subtle."

The cowboy frowned. "He fooled the world for twenty years. Not like you'd be any harder."

"That's enough from both of you," Winston interjected firmly. "Arguing isn't going to get us any closer to stopping Talon. If anything, it gets us further away from it, so you two need to keep your heads in the game."

The admonishment sank in fast: Both of them knew the ways seeing someone like Winston get angry could churn a stomach and make their heads feel light.

"Guess I was just eager to finish the job fast." Tracer explained.

"Yeah, I was kinda expecting a little more action tonight too," the cowboy replied before turning back to his camera monitor.

As McCree turned back to his work, though, Tracer lingered on his last words. A variety of feelings stirred within, as if her words and her thoughts didn't entirely align. Despite the entertainment value of Lucio's opening speech and the importance of why they were there, the follow-up of watching the crowd mix and mingle through the electronic eyes of camera drones was slow by her standards.

Then again, she remembered, _everything_ was slow to her.

Memories flashed through her mind, clear and fresh as though they had only just happened. Right from the beginning, she had been eager to move forward, live life in the fast lane, and look out for number one; It had been her driving force on the streets of King's Row, through flight school and RAF training, and had inspired her to join Overwatch's test pilot program. All her life, wanting a speedy way forward and a high-octane life had taken her to the top.

Until that one fateful day it nearly took everything.

It had been nearly ten years since the Slipstream's malfunction, which would have cost her her life had it not been for the quick thinking of her friends, some untested science, and a lot of luck. Until then her life had been filled with gambles and close shaves; it came with the territory of growing up in King's Row. The accident, however, was different, a nearly impossible gambit that had raised the stakes higher than before. Even just thinking about it identified one of the feelings swirling around in her mind as a twitch of fear, which sent a chill down her spine and into her extremities. Absentmindedly she looked down at her feet where the accelerator lay, the experimental anchor that tied her back down to the laws of physics. If it were to malfunction or be damaged, she'd float off into the oblivion that lay underneath the cracks of time itself.

But for how tenuous her grip was, it helped her identify her other major feeling: A sense of appreciation.

The accident had taught her things she'd never given a second thought to: That she wasn't invincible, that she couldn't come out clean on the other side every time, and that lucky breaks weren't nearly as common as she'd thought they were. This new perspective had put her life in a slower gear, even though, figuratively and literally, she could go faster than ever before. Joining up with Overwatch's field agent duty, turning what was originally a short fling into a long-term commitment with Emily, and forming her closest bonds with people like Angela and Winston had all been products of this new outlook on life. Slow moments, which at one point had been practically intolerable, were now savoured.

After all, she never knew if or when it could all end.

After a few seconds had passed, she closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and exhaled slowly. Her mind cleared, she turned her chair towards the monitors and resumed her work.

Until McCree called for her attention again.

"Take a look at this, Lena," he said, his eagerness catching her ear even further. "On Cam Three. Nothin' serious, just somethin' I think you'd like to see."

Curious as to just what McCree was hinting at, she brought up Camera Three's feed on her screen with the press of a button. What she saw just about melted her heart: The dance floor was empty except for Angela and Genji, closely embraced and waltzing lively across the floor to the music. Despite his initial protests to the contrary, Genji was proving quite adept, his mechanical feet hitting every mark with seeming ease and gracefully matching Angela's every step. A crowd had formed around the couple, each pair of eyes watching in awe.

Through the monitor, Tracer could see that though Angela was leading, Genji was just about ready to take over. As the music grew to a brief peak, the two of them slowed their dance to match the slower tempo. Tracer saw Angela draw closer to her dance partner, her legs brushing against Genji's robe, and whisper something in his ear. Though the drones couldn't pick up just what it was she had said to the cyborg, Tracer knew it had to be either something encouraging or, hopefully, something steamy.

When the tempo began to increase again, the dance did as well. Tracer found herself hoping to high heaven that the young sparrow would take flight with his long-admired angel, and with a spin and a dip as the melody reached a crescendo, he did. The collected dignitaries all showed their surprise with a chorus of oohs and aahs and a spirited applause as the dance picked up again. Tracer herself, barely able to contain her excitement and laughing with joy, jumped up from her chair so she could view the spectacle with her own eyes. Looking down from the control pedestal on the dance floor, a feeling of euphoria shot through her. After years of quiet admiration, the sparrow with a broken wing, the tortured soul who had thought he could never have a future with his perfect angel, had spread his wings wide and was soaring through the heavens, just as Tracer had heard him dream of all those years ago.

Likewise, she saw that Angela, the first one out of them all to see what was hidden underneath Genji's cold, metallic exterior, was on a cloud. The bitterness and guilt that had lingered over the team's former medic, one that had grown ever darker and impenetrable like a cloud when she left the team a second time, seemed to have vanished. Free from the weight, Angela was almost floating as she danced, each spin and each step showing an energy, an optimism, a hope that had been unnaturally scarce.

At last, the melody neared its conclusion. Tracer, still giddy over the performance, could see Angela's face light up again in response to something Genji had said before their waltz picked up again, in sync with the increased tempo of the music's finale. With an elegant flourish and and a rapid pirouette as the music reached its conclusion, their dance concluded with the couple standing side by side, hand in hand. As the congregated dignitaries erupted into applause and cheers, Genji turned towards his angel, his heart still racing from the exhilaration, and took a bow. Angela, breathing heavily and fueled by adrenaline and ecstasy, gave her dance partner a graceful curtsy before grabbing his collar and pulling him in close for a passionate embrace and a soft kiss on his faceplate where his lips would have been, much to the surprise of the crowd.

The most elation of all, though, still came from the control panel. At long last, it seemed that her friends had finally found each other. On top of that, she thought, what better way to exemplify the future that this party was celebrating? She brushed back a lock of hair as she beamed from ear to ear with a sense that everything was coming together, that everyone was going to get a happy ending, that the value of slow moments came from sights and experiences like these, and that the hope that Overwatch had been reformed for was finally going to win out.

As Genji and Angela walked off the dance floor, still hand in hand, and the crowd's volume softened as regular chit-chat resumed, Tracer surveyed the crowd just as she was about to sit down, enjoying the warm feeling that the past few minutes had given her.

Until she saw a face that turned that warm feeling to ice.

It was only out of the corner of Tracer's eye at first and she almost didn't think twice of it, but as she rotated her head slightly to the right to get a clearer look, it was unmistakable. A woman in a silk dress pattered with black lilies, standing in the midst of one of the larger gatherings that had broken off of the dance floor's collection. She wasn't conversing with anyone, only watching, listening, occasionally turning to observe her surroundings. Her face had features that Tracer could recognize even from the fifty foot distance that separated the two; Long raven hair, icy thin lips, her face blanketed by ghostly pale makeup, and soulless, dusty brown eyes fixed in a stare that cut through to the core of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the terrible web that was her gaze.

"No," Tracer mouthed, fearing that if she even so much as whispered, the person she saw would hear her over the combined voices of four hundred dignitaries making conversation. Her pulse quickened, her eyes widened to the size of oranges, and the locks on her forehead caught beads of sweat as they dripped down her skin. Her mind spontaneously raced through a series of waking nightmares; The searing pain of her lungs on fire as she inadvertently dashed through a cloud of purple gas, an accented purr of the woman's voice coldly saying "S _uch a sweet, foolish girl_ ", her utter shock and horror at seeing Tekartha Mondatta's lifeless husk collapse onto the cobblestones of King's Row, the whisper of " _Adieu, cheri_ " in her ear just before the stabbing pain of the accelerator being crushed against a brick wall, the chaos it had caused in her home and amongst friends like Iggy...

But something within her said otherwise. _It can't be._ she thought. _If she were going to do something, she'd have done it by now. Not only that, but she's a sniper, so she wouldn't be down here. Unless..._

Her train of thought was cut short as the woman turned in her direction, her eyes nearly making contact with Tracer's before she could dive down into her seat and put the control panel between herself and the woman's line of sight. With desperate, driven speed, she whisked a camera drone into position and zoomed its electronic eye in on the eerie figure.

"Winston, I've got someone on Camera Three for you to ID," she said swiftly. "It looks like Widowmaker's invited herself to the party."

The gorilla's response was immediate and almost frantic. "Widowmaker?! In the crowd?! How did we not see her earlier?"

"I don't know. I just spotted her a second ago while I was watching Angela and Genji dance."

"You just say is here who I think you said?" McCree interjected, leaning in to get a closer look at the picture on Tracer's monitor. As he surveyed the image, his brow furrowed and his teeth clenched, hardening his expression.

"She's right, too," the ape replied. "The facial scanner just confirmed it. Looks like Talon's here after all."

There was a brief pause in the conversation as everyone stared at the screen, looking at the face of Talon's most lethal operative. The air seemed to crackle with tension during the silence that followed, their faces all contorting in the same way as they came to terms with the ramifications of what her presence meant.

Tracer was the first one to speak up. "So, what's the plan of attack?"

Before an answer could be given, the PA system sounded again. "Esteemed dignitaries, you are now asked to make your way to the gardens along the east side of the palace. The presentation is about to begin."  
To its end, the security guards stationed outside the doors at either end of the ballroom stepped inside to usher the collected guests out the doors, filing them through one by one quickly and quietly.

"For now," Winston finally answered. "we'll need to just keep waiting." He looked down at another part of his control panel. "Fareeha, the dignitaries are headed out to Lucio's stage. Are you in position?"

"I see them heading outside now," Fareeha answered. "I'm on my way."

"But couldn't we nab her while everyone's busy and try interrogating her?" Tracer chimed in. "There has to be a reason why she's not outside in a sniper position."

"There's sure as hell a reason, but Talon assets ain't keen on givin' up details, no matter how much you lean in on 'em," McCree answered. Through it, Tracer got a sense that he knew more about what he was referring to than he wished he did

"As well, it looks like she's staying in the middle of the crowd. She's probably expecting us to try and make a move soon," Winston added. "Though you do have a point, Lena; it doesn't make much sense that a sniper would be up close." The gorilla scientist's voice had assumed a strong, commanding resonance. "I want you to suit up and patrol outside with Fareeha when Lucio's show is going on. This could be a critical moment of the night. McCree, you'll stay here and man the camera drones, keep looking for anything suspicious. Also, try to keep the drones inconspicuous around Widowmaker. If we let on that we've recognized her, it could jeopardize everything."

"Don't you remember? Inconspicuous is my middle name," the cowboy replied jokingly.

Tracer chuckled as she retrieved her accelerator from underneath the table. "I thought your middle name was David."

"Well that just don't sound quite as good, now don't it?"

Tracer smiled cheekily. "Whatever you say."

After mentally running through Winston's instructions on miniaturizing the accelerator in reverse, Tracer strapped the lightweight fiberglass and plastic device onto her upper body. As the harness was pulled taut, the center piece of the accelerator intensified from a low vibration to a steady hum and brightened to a baby-blue colouration. Afterwards, she reached into one of the duffel bags situated behind their seats and strapped on the wrist-mounted holsters for her pulse pistols, flipping the weapons in and out a few times to make sure that they were working properly.

"Happy trails," McCree sent off to Tracer, who returned the sentiment before snapping on her speed-augmented goggles and zipping off in a flash of blue, leaving the cowboy to stay and watch.

* * *

By this time, the cavalcade of dignitaries had exited the ballroom and was strolling out onto the palace grounds to take their seats for Lucio's presentation, the drones whirring off in pursuit. Switching off the holo-screen on his end, Winston took a deep breath and stretched in his chair, folding his hands tight as to keep them from shaking with excitement. During that time, only one thought dominated his mind, one that went a long ways to putting peace to the nagging concern that had lingered just over his shoulder for the past day and a half.

_I think we're going to do it._


	5. Unfinished

For one person in particular, the night meant nothing.

Widowmaker gritted her teeth as she was jostled around within the sea of bodies that was the crowd of dignitaries, making their mass migration towards the gardens like cattle to slaughter. There were several places she wished she could have been at that moment, and none of them were on the ground.

Even so, however, she knew there was at least some opportunity to be found. Individually she honed each sense, an ability that came as a product of copious bio-engineering, until the background clutter was nonexistent, as though it was her and whatever she individually chose to see, smell, hear, or touch and nothing else on Earth. Details that would have been lost in the chaos became front and centre: The asymmetric click of someone's heels as they briefly stumbled, the dueling aromas of cheap cologne and axle grease, a human with a silver beard leaning over to whisper something to their Omnic colleague, the warmth of the might air as the crowd fanned out through the doors to the garden. Every sense, every experience and memory that came with it, was within her grasp.

And yet, she felt nothing.

Her lips pursed; There was no substance, no true, tangible emotion to be found, just polite conversation, pomp and ceremony, and grand-scale politicking. It all was the same: Human or Omnic, cocktail dress or three piece suit, English, French, German, Japanese, or any of the bevy of languages being spoken, just meaningless details to her. It all had no impact on her, didn't bring any emotion to her cold, dead heart.

Internally, she cursed Reaper for charging her with this role in the plan. While she was ever the loyal servant to Talon's machinations, the triviality of the gala was beneath her, and it could go to hell for all she cared. She preferred something more... exhilarating, a place and scenario she often wished for, and that played in her mind with intimate detail.

* * *

_She stands on an open rooftop, high above the busy streets. A brisk breeze whistles through her long ponytail and breaks against her cheeks like waves on a rock, but she barely notices it. She is already cold to begin with, and a spider is always at home when waiting to descend upon its prey._

_She peers down from the rooftop, her lungs rushing with the cold air as she breathes in. Her muscles tense: She sees a movement that stands out from all the others._ _Her prey is close, and most importantly, thanks to the night's mask, oblivious._

_She raises her rifle, lining up the unsuspecting target within her crosshairs. Though the distance is great, she knows she can easily reach out and touch them with her icy hand as the rifle's barrel extends out. As her multi-eyed mechanical headdress closes over her face, she can see every angle, but the target is the only thing that matters. She savours the chilling rush as she takes in a deep breath and slowly lets it out, wrapping her finger around the trigger. Only when her lungs are empty and body is loosened does she send the bullet downrange, watching as it buries deep within them. Having found her mark, the target crumbles to the ground, the spark in their eyes fading away like a spent candle and their limbs splaying in all directions like a ragdoll_.

_A thin, satisfied smile spreads across her face and a sensual warmth spreads through her body from head to toe, a delicious thrill that makes her close her eyes and shiver with pleasure._

_In this moment of death, she feels alive._

* * *

A warm tinge trickled down her spine. In those moments, all the cold melted away into beautiful, addictive emotion, a high that she'd chased every day for the past ten years.

It was cut short as quickly as it began by a sharp whine of static in her earpiece, followed by Reaper's raspy growl. "Report in."

Widowmaker uttered a French expletive under her breath as the feeling faded and her frigid stoicism returned. "The plan is proceeding on schedule. Dinner was quiet. They will be expecting us to make a move during the show."

"Good. Were you able to identify who the monkey sent over?"

"Aside from _la docteur et sa petit copain_ , I've spotted your former _protégé_ and _la_ _fille naïve_ operating camera drones." From the way the revenant snickered, she could tell he liked her response.  
"One of their new recruits is here as well, as the Master of Ceremonies. The musician from Brazil," she continued.

"He won't be a problem. What about the camera drones? Did they see you?"

"At first they overlooked me, but I was spotted by the girl a few minutes ago, before the room was cleared. I assume I will have their attention for the next hour?"

"They probably think you're handling someone; It explains why you're not on the rooftops." A brief pause broke up the report, one that coincided with an Omnic wearing a bolo tie and lime-green suit to shout at her as she bumped into him, only to meekly back off as she stared daggers at him.  
"You'll also need to know that Kowalski reported in just before you did, said one of his men spotted someone flying around on the perimeter."

"Human or Omnic?"

"Human. Movements were too janky to be Liao's machine."

Her face twisted with an mixture of detest and wicked anticipation. "Ana's little girl," she purred. "She will be looking for saboteurs or gunmen, which she will find if Sombra decides to be timely."

"Sombra's given the word to the Junkers to get going, so the second phase is in motion; they'd better not screw it up. From here on in, you know what to do. Keep a low profile until the final speech, then give the signal. Once the EMP goes off, pick your targets, but Angela, Genji, and McCree are _mine_." With that, the connection on his end turned to static.

Widowmaker sniffed derisively as she shut off her earpiece. _Always looking to settle a score_ , she thought. If there was one thing she didn't respect about the man-turned-monster formerly known as Gabriel Reyes, it was that he always made things personal.

 _Still_ , her musings led to. _Perhaps this could provide... opportunities._

Her right index finger curled around a phantom trigger as the scenario of finally putting a bullet into the skull of that peppy little British brat looped in her mind, soon accompanied by the notion of doing the same to the daughter of the one markswoman who had ever gotten the best of her. Two such kills in one night, she thought, would certainly slake her lust for feeling.

By this point, the crowd of dignitaries had finally reached their destination, amassing at the seats in front of where a massive stage, similar to the one inside the ballroom, had been constructed. Unlike the stage inside though, this one had a great emphasis placed on several subwoofers on either side, hooked into a DJ set at the back of the stage that was tucked in between a pair of large TV screens. Oohs and ahs waved through the congregation, but Widowmaker didn't bother so much as a look.

Not when the warm tinge running down her spine had returned.

Under closed eyelids, she visualized the sight of Tracer underfoot in crisp, tangible detail, laughing as the brat desperately tried to crawl away until the barrel of her sniper rifle pressed against her skull and her brains were forcibly ousted via bullet from inside. The ecstasy of such a kill, she knew, would be unmatched, and the thought of it brought new, though foggy, images to light, chiefly one of a man lying in bed. Who was with him she couldn't tell, but the warmth of his smile and the gentleness of his touch made whoever it was there feel safe, comforted, and loved.

Feelings that, like a fire with no fuel, faded into nothingness as quickly as they arose. The image of the man morphed with the fleeting emotions, turning cold and pale amidst a red background that consumed him before disappearing into the void, leaving behind only the sight of a lonely, snow-covered headstone on frozen ground, decorated with a single rose and one name: 'Gerard Lacroix'.

In an instant her eyes shot open and she gasped for breath. Looking around her, all the rest of the guests had taken their seats, so she quickly followed suit. Brushing down her dress as she crossed her legs, a smile crept across her face.

 _Oui,_ she thought. _I can indulge in 'settling a score' for tonight_.

* * *

"It's getting kinda cold up here, don't you think?" Tracer said to Fareeha as they stood on a rooftop overlooking the stage.

Down below the two of them, the show was well underway, Lucio in full performing swing at the helm of a high-tech DJ set, creating electronic beats, riffs, and melodies to accompany the visual aspect. While Lucio's set was at the back of the stage, the immense screens displayed brilliant images of colour that changed according to the tempo and mood of the music, as well as numerous murals and pictures done in several different art styles from throughout history. These displays, while magnificent in their own right, served as an accompaniment to the extravaganza on the center of the stage.

For the dignitaries in attendance and the camera drones to see was a wordless play, a pantomime with each character being created by hard-light projectors attached to the beams overhead. The scenes being shown were a sequence, a timeline of the history of human-Omnic relations stretching across a span of thirty-plus years, shown through music, colour, and light. Each milestone was shown with dignity, grace, poetic style, and tone reflective of the real-life event; In the opening scenes, an overall feeling of triumph and hope was expressed as the creation of the first Omnics was shown. In later scenes involving the Omnic Crisis, the colours on the screens had turned to darker tones, and a thin curtain had been used to create silhouettes of war-torn battlefields and blend together the soldiers who had marched on them.

"The wind's definitely picking up, and it's a bit stiff," Fareeha responded. As she raised her head upwards as she surveyed the crowd, she glanced upwards at the bank of clouds that was drawing closer. "The sky looks pretty mean as well."

Tracer crossed her arms, shivering as a gust blew past the two. "Maybe I should've brought an umbrella."

"You probably wouldn't need it. It won't reach us by tonight. Even if I'm wrong, we'll have picked up Widowmaker and whoever she's with by the time it comes in."

"That's why I'm up here. The two of us versus whatever Talon's got in store? I pity those poor bastards."

The two of them chuckled at Tracer's quip for a moment before the conversation went into a lull, the wind and the stage fulfilling the auditory aspect until Tracer, again, was the one to break the silence.  
"How do you do it?"

Fareeha slowly looked over at her. Underneath her suit's beak-like helmet, her face took on an appearance of confusion. "Excuse me?"

"How do you make weather talk of all things not sound awkward? It's pretty much the go-to subject for when there's nothing else to talk about and you somehow make it not sound like nails on a chalkboard."

"Really?" Fareeha paused for a moment to take off her helmet and brush her jet-black hair off to one side, her eyes flicking between directions with a combination of pensiveness and mild surprise. Soon though, a smile crept up on one side of her face as she looked back over at Tracer. "I guess that's something I got from Dad. Ever since I was little, he's said that the only predictable thing about Canadian weather is that it's completely unpredictable. Because of it, it's practically the subject of choice for small talk across the country." The smile turned into a grin as she broke into a chuckle. "Well, that and hockey."

Tracer snorted with amusement. "And I thought Britain had nasty weather." She looked back out over the crowd; they all seemed to be enjoying Lucio's show immensely. About an hour had passed since the show had began and it had been pretty quiet since then. Still, the threat was imminent, and her and Faheera couldn't let up. "Move to the next building?"

"Great minds think alike."

A blink and a rocket boost later, they had a new angle on the performance and more time to kill. Tracer looked over at Fareeha inquisitively as she found a seat along the edge of the roof and criss-crossed her legs. "I never met your dad. Seems like he's quite the person."

Fareeha's face lit up with a mix of fondness and longing. Her tight, military grip on her rocket launcher loosened as she slung the weapon over her shoulder. "Yeah, he is. We didn't spend much time together when I was little; Mum got custody when they split up, and Canada and Egypt aren't exactly close by. They were always on good terms, but the only real times I saw him for any length were on holidays and the occasional visit during tours of service." She took a knee next to Tracer on the roof's edge. "You know, the first time I got deployed to Canada, they sent me off to an Air Force base in British Columbia for joint exercises, and guess who was there?"

Tracer tapped her knee with one finger as she stared up into space before it hit her. "No way! Sounds like quite the coincidence."

"He was the base commander at the time and once he'd found out who was getting deployed for the joint exercises they were doing, he'd gone out of his way to make sure I didn't know who was in charge. After a week of drills and maneuvers, I was about to turn in for the night before we left for Cairo the next day when I was delivered a hand-written invitation to dinner in the base commander's quarters. Now, I still didn't know who the base commander was by this point, so I was thinking 'Why is this happening? Who is this person? There's got to be a reason for this, right?'"

"Sounds like the setup Torbjorn and I came up with when we emptied that jar of peanut butter into Reinhardt's helmet," Tracer commented, smirking as the memory of the prank lit up inside her mind.

Fareeha gasped as her eyes widened and an astounded expression swept across her face. "Ohmygod, that was _you_?! Mum said that half the staff at Geneva were laughing their asses off for a week! I still ask Reinhardt what kind of hair gel he's using whenever I see him!"

"Guilty as charged. You know what the funniest part is? Winston still doesn't know where that jar of peanut butter went. He keeps a file on Athena where he's been trying to figure out who took it, and he's no closer than he was eight years ago!"

The two shared a hearty laugh for the next few seconds before they'd both regained enough composure to speak again. "I hope you remembered to shut off your intercom. Winston wouldn't be too happy if you spoiled the mystery," Fareeha said while catching her breath.

"Don't sweat about it, it's no big deal. I'm actually gonna tell the big guy after we get back to Gibraltar."

"Sounds like a good idea. Speaking of which, we should move to a new spot."

After zipping to a new rooftop and a look-over from this new vantage point revealed nothing out of the ordinary, Tracer sparked the conversation back up again as she took her seat along the roof's overlook.  
"So, how'd the story with you and your dad at the same air base end? I kind of interrupted you in the middle of it."

"It's alright. It wasn't all that out of place," Fareeha reassured. "So, when I got to the CO's quarters, I opened it up to find Dad sitting at a small table, pizza and a six-pack of Moosehead in the middle of it and paper plates on either side. He got up, walked over to me, and when I was saluting him he wrapped me in a bear-hug."

"Aw, that's so sweet," Tracer beamed. "When was the last time he'd seen you?"

"About seven years before. The first thing he said to me was how tall I'd gotten."

Tracer smirked. "Really? And you're what, five-eight?"

"Yup. Mum and I are the tall ones in the family. Dad's two inches shorter than either of us. Anyways, when I saluted him, he said there's no need for ceremony. He just wanted to talk."

She sighed happily as she leaned back. "We probably spent four, maybe five hours catching up with each other. He told me how the Air Force was going, how he was lobbying the government to bring jobs to towns up in the north, stuff like that. I told him how the Army was going for me, how Mum was doing, about Helix approaching me to test the Raptora prototype, how I wanted to join up with Overwatch. Finally, before I went back to the barracks, we agreed that we'd do it again once a year. Didn't matter where or when, so long as we shared dinner and a conversation. The last thing he did before I left was give me my first guitar."

"Get outta here!" Tracer exclaimed. "So he's the reason why you have that collection."

"Pretty much. With all the training and service time that Mum and the Army had given me, he suggested I get myself a hobby to keep from turning into a workaholic. I'd always liked playing with his, but since a year's worth of Army pay wouldn't get me close to the price of a good one, he gave it to me as a gift. It was even signed by the members of his favourite band. I never got to see them in concert; they split up after their lead singer died when Dad was just a baby. He told me he got lucky when he found it at a bargain shop in Victoria and when he saw it, he immediately thought of the two of us listening to their albums when I was little."

She stopped and smirked at the memory that was crossing her mind. "He'd be playing the guitar and I, all of about five years old, would be belting out the lyrics, out of tune and messing up the words, but happy as can be." She began first humming, then quietly singing a tune that Tracer didn't recognize, but could tell was close to her friend's heart. " _It was in Bobcaygeon, where I saw the constellations, reveal themselves one star at a time..._ "

Tracer was grinning ear to ear as she wiped a happy tear from her eye. "That's beautiful. I wish I'd have met your dad by now. Sounds like he's as great as Ana was."

Fareeha didn't answer. Her smile and her melody faded away as turned her head down towards the stage; Lucio's performance was in the post-Crisis segment, showing how groups like Overwatch and the Shambali laboured to keep the tenuous peace between humans and Omnics. A wide array of colours and music of various tempos and tones represented the tribulations of this pursuit and the arduous task of making the equality that had been often shown on the surface hold true when not out in public.

"There something wrong?" Tracer asked concernedly.

Fareeha didn't turn to look back at her friend. "You know, Dad was actually the first person I told about following in Mum's footsteps," she whispered, as though there was some someone around that she didn't want to hear her words.

Tracer was caught off guard. "How come?"

"He was always the supportive one. When Mum didn't approve, you could tell, and I knew exactly what to expect if I told her."

"Did she?"

Fareeha's tone took on a slight edge and a hint of cynicism. "I told her it was my decision and it was what I wanted, but her answer was right on cue: Slow, quiet, almost too sweet, a long pause before she said she 'supported me'. She's been doing it since I was a teenager even though I've been able to see right through it the whole time," She picked up her helmet from off the cold slab of concrete underneath them and returned it to her head, activating the sensors as she rose to her feet and turned towards the concert.

Tracer, meanwhile, stayed on the floor, not sure where to go from there. Nothing she'd ever seen or heard had indicated that Fareeha's accusations were true, and for some time she was rendered speechless, unable to come up with the proper response. Memories of Ana sharing photos of a young Fareeha and reminiscing on the stories behind them with tears in her eyes rolled through her thoughts. Even the tattoo that mother and daughter shared under their eyes told her otherwise. When she did reply on another rooftop, she was hesitant, not wanting to anger her friend but hoping to give her a new take on what she had experienced.

Her voice was low and her tone compassionate. "You know, when Emily and I first started getting serious, I didn't tell her I was working for Overwatch and I went out of my way to try to make sure she didn't find out. She did eventually though, and I was terrified of what she was going to say, what with me risking my neck on a daily basis. When she did tell me, I'd been preparing for the worst for so long that that's all I heard: the worst. It was our first real big fight and it nearly tore us apart. It took nearly a week for me to stop fretting about it and realize that even though I'd thought she'd been angry, she was actually just fine with it. I guess I'd been so focused on what I feared she would say that it was like blinders on a horse."

She looked over at Fareeha, who hadn't moved a muscle since she'd put her helmet back on.

"Um, Fareeha? Hello? You been listening?" Tracer made an animated wave to try to attract her friend's attention.

"Shh!" Fareeha admonished with the raising of her index finger, her eyes still locked forward.

"What was that for?"

"Look," Fareeha pointed out across the gardens. "Two hundred fifty metres due south, by the fireworks setup." Her voice and tone were cool and authoritative, as though she were out on the battlefield with a platoon under her command.

"What is it?" Tracer asked, rapidly turning her head in the direction that her colleague was pointing.

"What we've been looking for."

Tracer removed her orange-tinted goggles and squinted her eyes to try to see what it was she was supposed to be in sight. Scanning over countless pieces of topiary, she struggled to peer through both the night's shroud and the glare from the light that shined from the stage below. Just as she was about to tell Faheera that she couldn't see anything, she caught a glimpse of it; Two members of the production crew, pyrotechnicians in charge of the fireworks that were to be fired off as part of the grand finale of Lucio's audio-visual spectacular. Normally they'd be bustling around with a half-dozen others of their same profession like bees making honey, but the area was quiet, and these two in particular were off their feet, being dragged behind a hedge by some unknown assailant who had rendered them unconscious, or worse.

"I'd say I agree with you. We'd better be quick before more people get hurt," she said.

Fareeha pressed a button on her wrist before speaking. "Winston, we've got suspicious activity south of the outside stage, around the fireworks. There are at least two personnel down and an unknown number of attackers. I suggest that Tracer and I investigate."

"Good work, you two," Winston replied. "This will most likely be Widowmaker's accomplice. Move in, take them out quick, and make sure the crowd doesn't figure anything out. The clock says that Lucio's presentation is almost over, and if those fireworks get tampered with, there's no telling what sort of destruction they could cause."

"Never fear, big guy," Tracer interjected. "We'll have them down for the count faster than you can say 'Bob's your uncle'. The cavalry's here, love. Remember?"

"How could I forget? Good luck to the both of you."

Tracer snapped her goggles back on as Fareeha picked up her rocket launcher and held it in a ready position. The two of them exchanged a glance and a confirming nod before soaring off with the roar of a rocket engine and zipping away in a flash of blue.


	6. Paint The Town Red

"Now this is my kinda job, eh Roady?" Junkrat giggled as he ripped out the existing computer ship for the remote fireworks launcher and duct-taped in a new one.

Roadhog made no indication of a response; He'd known for years that the fiery-haired maniac wasn't worth indulging. He instead looked to the skies through the goggles of his mask, knowing that they wouldn't be alone for much longer.

His partner-in-crime, meanwhile, either didn't notice or care as he fiddled with a pair of frayed wires, not entirely sure where they were supposed to go but, even as he twitched and yelped with each electrocution, not seeming to bother. "You said it wouldn't be worth the trouble, but oh sweet Christmas were you wrong on that one, mate! A hot Mexican chick shows up outta nowhere n' offers us a metric arse-ton o' cash, and all we gotta do is make a party full of Omnic-loving drongos go out with a bang! LITERALLY!"  
He threw his head back in cackling laughter until another shock from a poorly crossed wire dropped him to the ground, but despite being mildly cooked he got back up as though nothing had happened. "What kinda murderous explosive-obsessed psychos would we be if we passed it up?!"

Roadhog still took no notice, instead twirling the gigantic metal chain-hook he kept in one hand to keep his mind off strangling the prattling idiot.

"Well maybe it's time you were a little less over-the-top!" Junkrat shouted. "Outta the two of us, I didn't blow up a skyscraper in L.A. just for shits n' giggles, after all."

The pig-faced killer turned towards Junkrat and raised his hand as though to say something, but was promptly cut off.

"OK, so I _was_ the guy who did that, but I'm trying to make a point here! Point is I'm not gonna be the dipstick who looks a gift horse in the mouth."

Another attempt at getting Junkrat's attention, who still had his back turned as he punched the digital timer to make it light up, was left in vain.

"Instead, I'm gonna be the dipstick who fires off a hundred 'Junkrat specials' - patent pending - and gets to watch the watch the show before collecting a cool load a' big ones! It's _FOOLPROOF_!" The peg-legged lunatic erupted into maniacal, euphoric laughter that echoed through the topiary-lined walkways until he was thrown back again by another electric shock, skidding across the walkway.

"Sorry to say, but you won't be getting to see that show," a cheeky-sounding, Cockney-accented woman's voice replied from out of nowhere. "Also, good for you for admitting the dipstick part. That's Step One out of the way."

Junkrat leaped up and spun around towards Roadhog, eyes wide with shock and face twisted in insane fury. "Oi, what the hell're you on about, ya wombat?! I'm tryin' ta make the mother of all explosions here and _YOU_ keep on interrupting me!"

With an exasperated grunt, the hog physically grabbed Junkrat by the scruff of his neck, turned him around one hundred eighty degrees, set him down, and pointed towards the reason he'd been trying to get his attention. Twenty feet in front of them, Fareeha touched down on the pathway, the stone cracking as she made impact on one knee. Beside her Tracer shot in from a beam of blue light, coming to a halt in a ready stance with her pulse pistols drawn.

Junkrat's face drooped in confusion until something in his addled mind finally clicked. "Ooooooooooooh, so that's who was doing all the yammering!" He spun on his pegleg towards his comrade and stuck his index finger in his face. "You literally had one job. ONE. JOB. How'd you screw it up?!"

Roadhog's face sunk into his open palm as he sighed loudly. " _Idiot_."

"Hey, you're those two crooks who stole the Crown Jewels a couple years ago!" Tracer realized, her expression growing stern and her grip on her pulse pistols growing tighter.

Junkrat stepped forward, holding the straps of his bomb harness like suspenders on a tuxedo. "That's us alright. Junkrat's the name, and Junkrat-ing's the..." He raised a finger to his chin as he tried to figure out how the phrase went. "What was it? Um... Junkr... Jun-no, no... um... _OH NEVER MIND, JOKE CANCELLED! MOVE ALONG_!"

Fareeha raised her rocket launcher to eye level and stared down the barrel. "Drop your weapons and disarm the bomb. You're coming with us."

"Ah yeah, about that," Junkrat replied, falling to the ground in a lounging position. "Ol' Pig-Face and I've got a HUUUUGE payday waiting for us after we make scrap outta the blokes sitting off over there," He popped up inbetween the two as he spoke, grinning disturbingly at Fareeha as he pressed his head against her helmet until she pushed him off and onto the ground. "and there isn't One. Single. Thing you can do that's gonna make us give it up. Now if you'll excuse me, it's just about showtime, and lemme tell ya: This is gonna be _good_."

As he got up and turned back around towards the fireworks, a burst of pulse bullets struck the ground in front of him, causing him to jump back and yelp in surprise.

"Tell you what: There's two things that solve every problem," he said, holding up three fingers. "Money, and explosives. You put those away," He gestured to the weapons that Tracer and Fareeha carried. "and bugger off for the next five minutes, we'll cut you both in for ten percent. You'll have to split it, of course."

Tracer and Fareeha made no response as Junkrat continued to try to worm his way out of the situation. "Fifteen then? Twenty? Twenty five? Fifteen, _each_?" With each failed offer, he hunched over more and his expression grew increasingly sniveling.

Under her helmet, Fareeha rolled her eyes as she pulled out a pair of energy handcuffs. "You're wasting your time," she said, exasperated as she opened one up and made her way over to Junkrat.

Before she could, however, his jaw suddenly went agape and his eyes glimmered with a manic energy. "You know Roady," he called out, looking back over at the silent pig. "there's TWO ways to solve every problem. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Roadhog nodded back at his accomplice and, in under a second, threw his massive hook at Fareeha, which wrapped around her midsection and yanked her towards him with the force of a speeding truck. Simultaneously, he reached behind him and revealed an immense makeshift shotgun that he fired multiple times at Tracer, who blinked out of the way of the spray of shots effortlessly.

Instinctively, Fareeha activated her rocket boosters and took off to try to break free of the hook's grasp, but a turn of the wrist and a second heave of the chain sent her careening onto the stone walkway with a hard crunch. As she picked herself up, another wrench launched her into a solid stone pot, shattering it and collapsing the bush growing out of it on top of her. Before Roadhog could hurl her into something else, however, a scattering of pulse bullets landed around him as Tracer dashed in. Circling her gargantuan opponent in an un-hittable blur of blue light, she peppered him with rapid-fire shots from her pistols, many of which found their mark in his bulk and sent him down onto one knee.

Fareeha groaned as she lifted the overturned bush off of her. The heads-up display of her suit showed no major damage done, though the soreness of her head and back didn't seem to agree. "Now I know how Reinhardt feels when he charges into a wall," she muttered.  
As she got herself back on her own two feet and removed the hook, she picked up her weapon and walked quickly over to the bloodied and wheezing hog, who glared at her on an even level even though he was on his knees. Through his mask and her helmet visor, neither one could see the other's expression, but they both knew their enemy had a steely disposition and mutual disdain in their eyes.

Believing the monstrous pig defeated, Tracer looked around her in an attempt to locate where Junkrat had slunk off to. When she spotted him tampering with the fireworks again, she took off towards him, but as she came out of her blink right behind the lunatic and her feet made contact with the ground, she didn't hear the solid tapping sound of cold stone. Whatever it was underfoot gave way with a ca-chink and beeped loudly.

Tracer's eyes, previously focused forward like a falcon diving on its prey, widened in a nanosecond, and her head jerked downwards to see what it was she had stepped on. Beneath her was a large plastic and metal disc with a crudely done, toothy-grinned yellow smiley face painted on it.

Before she could even think about her next move, time seemed to slow down, making the next few seconds feel like a few minutes. The phenomenon was a familiar one: Winston had designed the accelerator so that when she came in and out of blinks, time, relatively speaking, was warped to a crawl so that even the smallest detail could be taken in fully and danger could be averted in a split second. At that exact moment where she looked down, she could see vividly as bit by bit, piece by piece, the mine she had trodden on was consumed by a blinding light and intense heat. As it happened, the accelerator hummed louder and the bright blue colouration intensified.

At the same time, Fareeha was about to slap on a pair of energy cuffs on Roadhog when a flash of fire and light forced her to shield her eyes and a shockwave sent her skidding on her feet across the ground. When she looked back at where the explosion had come from, she saw that the spot where Tracer had been standing was now a small crater, engulfed in smoke and flames. Her rigid composure was disintegrated as the coldness of sheer terror threatened to overwhelm her. She tried to scream out Tracer's name, but the horror of the sight before her robbed her of breath, leaving only a silent cry of " _Lena_!"

Impulsively she raced forward to search for something, anything, that would prove that her friend was still alive, but she was knocked down by a sudden headbutt from the pig. As he rose off of his one knee, he reached behind him and took out a stubby, cylindrical container that he attached to one of the breathing devices on his gas mask and inhaled deeply from, sighing with satisfaction as he tossed the can aside.

Fareeha had barely enough time to get up off the ground before the same massive Junker who had been riddled with pulse rounds ten seconds earlier charged her and delivered a hard punch to her gut as though he hadn't even so much as been touched. Another punch connected, this time with her helmet, and sent her sprawling backwards, knocking her off balance again. As she caught herself with her suit's boosters, her head lowered and her eyes under her helmet narrowed in on him. Floating just above the ground, she raised her clenched fists in a boxing stance. "You'll regret that," she growled.

Her proclamation was met by a primal roar from her opponent, who charged her like a mad bull. In response, her boosters kicked into high gear and rocketed her back in his direction with a howling scream. Their blows connected with a thunderous crash and left the recipients sliding backwards across the ground, but they both picked themselves up swiftly and charged each other again.

* * *

On the other side of the cloud of smoke, Junkrat cackled happily as he surveyed the destruction he had set off. Taking in a long, deep breath, he savoured the odour of gunpowder and burnt hedges that hung heavy in the air to an unsettling level.

"Ah, nothing quite like kabooming someone to smithereens before they even realize what the bloody hell just happened," he mused. "Almost makes me feel... sentimental." He stood silent for a second, shifting his skinny frame onto his one good leg and cocking his head to one side, as though he was contemplating his actions.

It was a fleeting moment that was immediately forgotten. "Well that was fun while it lasted! Now back to the _real_ good stuff!" he exclaimed with a laugh before turning back towards his nearly-finished device and installed the final pieces of his contraption. "Say, I wonder how many of those bots and bot-lovers heard that?" he chortled, not expecting an answer.

"Just checked that for you," a Cockney-accented voice from an indiscernible origin called out. "and luckily, our guy says none of them did."

Junkrat's self-satisfied smile was wiped away immediately as he whirled around; He'd recognized the voice instantly, but he couldn't believe his ears that the voice's owner still existed. Before he could make any further response, he was tackled to the ground by a streak of blue light that revealed itself to be Tracer, alive and well despite being seemingly obliterated seconds ago.  
"You're supposed to be _dead_!" he cried. "How're you not a pile of chunks across three different counties?!"

With a haughty expression, Tracer pointed at her chronal accelerator. "Rewind, love. Always helps when time is on my side." She then flipped out one of her pulse pistols from its holster and pressed the barrel against the madman's nose. "You on the other hand..."

Junkrat curled backwards in cowardice, laughing nervously. "T-take it easy now. I was just kidding earlier. You know how it is, eh? Friendly conversation, good times with good buddies, and then you blow 'em to kingdom come! You've done that before, right? _Right?_ "

"Can't say that I have," Tracer replied as she grabbed him by his bomb harness and lifted him off the ground.

"Well you know, Rocket Queen back there turned down getting in on the payday, but you never said diddly," he squeaked. "I can cut your share outta Roadhog's still. Real nice thing to be in on, I guarantee."

Her voice was coloured with a mix of incredulity and exasperation. "You'll try to weasel your way out of anything, won't you?"

"And when that don't work, I do THIS!"

Raising his artificial right arm, he gripped a trigger and pressed down on it. Behind him, the device that he had been tinkering with the past several minutes came to life, a digital monitor glowing before beginning a countdown from thirty. A spark went down the wires that were branching out from the apparatus and terminated at the launchers that the fireworks were placed in.

Junkrat grinned psychotically at Tracer, who was looking at the device with both fear and curiosity. "Y'see," he explained. "when that goes off, every last one of those fireworks is gonna get turned into a improvised guided missile and, well, let's just say the bigwigs and suits back over there are gonna _PAINT THE TOWN RED!_ "

As he cackled at his own self-amusement, Tracer tightened her grip on his bomb harness and pushed her pistol harder against his nose, trying to enforce an intimidating visage.

"So what's it gonna be, kick me 'round or go be a hero?" he sneered, his confidence showing that he knew exactly what it was Tracer was trying not to. "You only got time for one."

Almost too quickly, Tracer loosened her hold on Junkrat's harness, dropped him to the ground, and blinked off to the device.

"Well that was just about too predictable!" he laughed as he dusted himself off. "I'm off 'ta go pick up my reward. It's been fun, really. Who knows? Maybe I'll blow you up for real nex-"

The breath from Junkrat's lungs was forced out all at once with a high-pitched scream as a giant metal hook wrapped around his chest and sent him hurtling backwards through the last wisps of smoke. On the other side, he scraped along the stone pathway before coming to a sudden halt against Roadhog's wheezing mass, who himself was pinned to the ground at the foot of a triumphant Fareeha, standing over him with his hook in her own hands. The two of them shared a mutual smile and a nod before Tracer took off for the device. When she got there, she combed over it for an off switch, or really anything that seemed like it would keep the fireworks from turning into weapons of mass destruction. "Winston," she finally said into her earpiece. "the fireworks have been jerry-rigged into missiles and are going to go off in fifteen seconds. How do I shut them down?"

Winston spoke with urgency, but also reassuringly. "You can't prevent them from launching in that short of a time, but you can keep them from hitting the audience. The device you're looking at is likely hooked into the remote launcher. Take the outer covering off and there should be a cluster of wires attached to the relay."

"Already done," Tracer answered, tossing the monitor aside. "It's at ten seconds now. You might wanna hurry with the explanation!"

"Cut to the chase, got it. Can you see which wires are connected to which outlets?" Winston asked.

"Just tell me what to pull out!"

* * *

At the same time, Fareeha was watching from a distance with great interest as Tracer fiddled with the contraption.

"She's not-gonna-make-it!" Junkrat mocked in a sing-song voice.

"Shut up!" Fareeha barked, tugging on the chain that she had him ensnared on. As she looked back up at Tracer, however, there was a gnawing feeling within her that couldn't help but wonder if the peg-legged pyromaniac was right. "You can do it," she whispered under her breath, not wanting to betray any signs of weakness to her enemies.

The next few seconds, tense as they were, answered her question.

Swiftly, Tracer blinked back over to where her teammate and their captives were, a triumphant smile on her face. No sooner had she arrived when the fireworks ignited and soared into the air with a chorus of screeches and high-pitched whistles. Junkrat looked up at the sky in victory, only to have it replaced with utter shock as the fireworks detonated in the air, sending an array of sparkling colours across the night sky. Back at the stage, Lucio's performance had similarly met its triumphant ending, depicting the success of the peace negotiations that had brought them all to Versailles on that night and garnering a standing ovation from the entire audience.

"Oh _COME ON_!" Junkrat screamed in furious dismay. "How'd you rework my bombs?!"

Tracer strode over to the vehemently angry Australian and bent over to look him in the eye. "One thing you forgot about, love," she gloated as she produced the outer cover of his creation, showing him the digital monitor frozen at exactly one second. "Time is on my side."

Junkrat was indignant. "Oh ha ha ha, very funny!" he said as he scowled and turned cheek, pouting like a spoiled child.

Fareeha then stepped in and began disarming the defeated duo and placing energy cuffs on them. "Well, I'm just thankful that we both made it out of this in one piece. I almost thought I'd lost you back there," she said.

"Yeah, this was a close shave even for my standards." Tracer replied. She then picked up the littered array of bombs, guns, and various other lethal devices that Fareeha had removed, blinking off towards the ship and returning empty-handed almost immediately after. "You know, I can clean all this up if you want to take them away."

Fareeha gave an affirming nod, then turned away as she activated her earpiece. "Winston, we've got the perpetrators. They're a pair of hired thugs, most likely signed up by Talon as someone they could dispose of easily in case things went south."

"Oi, we aren't just some hired thugs!" Junkrat shouted resentfully. "I'll have you know that we've got twenty-five million on our skins!"

His yapping was cut short by a hard cross to the cheek. "What part of 'shut up' don't you understand?" Fareeha snapped.

Junkrat rolled his eyes back into their sockets as he sighed with extreme contempt.

"I'd suggest holding them until the gala's over," she continued. "Once the event's done, we'll leave them for the gendarmes. In the meantime, I'll keep an eye on them and see if they know anything more about what Talon's got planned."

"Good idea. With Lucio's show finished, most of the work will be inside, making sure Talon doesn't try to execute a Plan B. Tracer and McCree can handle it from there. Winston out."

"Whoa whoa, easy on the merchandise! 'Irradiated basketcase' ain't an easy look to come by!" Junkrat complained as Fareeha slung him over her shoulder and grabbed Roadhog by the chain of his cuffs. She herself took no notice, purposefully blocking out her prisoner's drivel so that it wouldn't drive her as insane as he was.

Just as she was about to take off, Tracer quickly pulled her aside with a tap on the shoulder.

"Wait up a moment." Tracer interrupted. She walked up close to Faheera, covering one side of her mouth with a free hand and speaking softly. "Back on the rooftop, did you catch what I was saying just before we spotted these two?"

Fareeha didn't answer immediately. She tilted her head up as though she was recollecting the moment in her head. A few seconds later, she turned back to Tracer. "Can't say I did. Sorry," she said monotonously.

Tracer betrayed a hint of dejection at first, but recomposed herself quickly. "Oh, OK then. It... wasn't that important anyway." She saluted her friend with a cheery smile. "See you when it's over." With that, she blinked off out of sight.

"You too," Fareeha called back, but Tracer was long gone by the time the words had escaped her mouth. Her suit's boosters turned on with a growing whine, a din that muffled out all noise around her. "Like blinders on a horse," she whispered solemnly as her boosters reached full power and carried both her and her captives off towards the buildings surrounding the perimeter of the grounds.

* * *

In the localized noise and confusion of her launch point, what hedges and pieces of stonework hadn't been obliterated by the recent action shook and swayed under the combination of noise and wind generated. It was from behind the cover of these upset plants and cracked statues that Sombra had invisibly bore witness to Fareeha and Roadhog's brawl, Junkrat's tricks and Tracer's dance with death, and the narrowly successful disarmament of the contraption, and now let her thermo-optic camouflage fade away, a lavender outline being filled in with her features. With the area clear, there was no worry of being seen.

Placing two fingers on her earpiece, she spoke with a mocking, derisive tone. "Gabe? You still there? Am I interrupting your brooding again?"

On the other end, Reaper exhaled loudly. "This had better be good," he growled.

"Oh don't go into full-on _aguafiestas_ mode so quickly. I thought I actually heard some happiness underneath all that edge."

"Just cut to the chase," Reaper demanded.

She grinned smugly. "OK, but only because you asked so nicely. _La rata y el puerco_ just had their scheme cut short. The Amari kid and Lacroix's favourite playmate showed up and kicked their asses. You should have seen it. Pretty impressive."

Reaper's gravelly voice took an even more sinister manner than usual. "Then they've played their part. As of now, Phase Two is underway. Is your part ready to go?"

"Of course it is," she said proudly. "I thought you'd learned to stop doubting me by now."

"Then get ready. When Lacroix gives the signal, you know what to do. Once you're done, get back to the ship and maintain systems. Nothing's going to save Overwatch this time."

"Night isn't over yet Gabe. I'm sure you'll find a way for everything to go wrong."

"Do your job and we won't have to worry about that," he snapped. "Now get into position and keep the chatter down until this is over." With that, the feed on his end cut out, leaving only static in its place.

Sombra switched off her earpiece and sniffed. Whenever it got down to crunch time, Reaper was even more irritable than usual.

_It's going to be a lot quieter in the future when things change. I may almost miss you,_ she thought to herself.

As this last thought crossed her mind, a crack of thunder caused her to look up, where she saw the clouds that Faheera had said wouldn't arrive had rolled in, bringing with them a cold torrent of rain. Slowly and confidently, she walked out from behind her smoldering hedge towards the palace. With each step, her features turned transparent, starting from her feet, upwards over her jacket, over the glowing purple device fused to her back, across the interface on her left hand, and finally travelling over her face and hair until she was once again completely invisible, the only thing alluding to her location being a faint outline where the rain didn't hit the ground, silently lurking around the palace and its occupants with deadly intent.

_Still, he's actually right about this_ _one_ , she continued to muse. _There's no way Overwatch is going to make it out of here alive_. _Might as well make it interesting._


	7. Missing Details

"I reckon congratulations are in order, Ms. Oxton!" McCree proclaimed, tipping his hat as the woman of the hour made her return.

Tracer laughed as she removed her accelerator and returned it to its position underneath the control center's table. "Oh come now, only Athena calls me 'Ms. Oxton'. I thought you knew that." She raised her hand for a high-five, which her friend obliged happily as she she sat back down and saw through the drones' eyes once more. Across the rest of the ballroom, the dignitaries were steadily filing in, the volume of chit-chat growing ever so steadily as the night's final hour neared.

"I figured it'd be somethin' to call the fine lady who just saved the day. Well, the night that is," McCree said.

Tracer removed her goggles as a flattered expression came over her. "It wasn't all me, you know. If it hadn't been for Fareeha, I don't think we'd have been able to stop them."

"Nah, don't sell yourself short; you both done great. Did I ever tell you 'bout the time a few of the guys from Blackwatch tried collecting on those two wingnuts?"

"No. What happened?" Tracer asked, somewhat puzzled but also curious.

McCree smirked. "Well, let's just say I'd be real surprised to see any a' them 'round now, at least in one piece that is. Thing is, most of of them guys're like bison; huge angry walls of muscle with tiny peabrains and bad attitudes."

"Funnily enough, that describes one of those Junkers almost to a T," Tracer bantered back. "The other one was a skinny little tosser who just wouldn't stop yapping, and he moved around like a bloody cartoon character. Worst of all, he had the most annoying, high-pitched voice you could imagine; Faheera could barely stand it. The only time he actually didn't have anything to say was after Winston had walked me through how to shut down the device that he used to try to turn the fireworks into guided missiles."

McCree's eyes widened and he whistled in a manner that showed he was impressed.

"I know. Pretty crazy plan. What about on your end? Did you catch Widowmaker in the act?"

The cowboy frowned discouragingly, a reaction that Tracer soon mirrored, as he turned back towards the panel and called up the last two hours of footage the drones had collected. One such drone's eye was fixated on Widowmaker for the entire show, hoping to catch some sort of errant action, unusual glance, anything that could be used to deduce further details of Talon's scheme. For the vast majority of the time, all the drone captured was her staring blankly at the stage, her face not betraying even the faintest expression. The only action she was seen taking was at the very end, as the fireworks shot up into the air and Lucio was awarded with a standing ovation. She stood, but gave no applause, instead tilting her head to the right at an angle and pressing a finger against her ear.

Tracer leaned in closer as she zoom-and-enhanced the footage. She glanced over at the screen showing the feed of the fireworks going off, then back over at Widowmaker. Her eyes peeled away from the blank, soulless face down to the time marker at the bottom corner of the screen. She then did the same for the fireworks feed before slumping back in her chair and sighing in disbelief, her brow furrowed and her eyes squinted in frustration. "Bugger!" she exclaimed. "She knew we were going to stop them!"

"Winston figured that out too," McCree replied. "He had his suspicions up when she didn't clear out right 'round when you called up and said the thing was about to go off. I wasn't too sure, so he suggested that we wait 'till you got back an' ask for a second opinion."

Tracer placed her index finger on her temple as her as her head lowered and her eyes sped from side to side like watching a tennis match. "Well, do we know what she was saying? Maybe Winston picked up her channel."

One of the screens was diverted away from the recorded footage with a brief flash of static before refocusing on Winston's face. "Unfortunately, I couldn't. She was on an encrypted channel that Athena couldn't tap into during the seven point four seconds it was online. We've been monitoring communication feeds all night, but hers hasn't shown up for long enough to get a trace on it."

"On top a' that, the noise from the fireworks and the dignitaries kept the drones from pickin' her voice up," McCree chimed in.

"Couldn't you zoom the camera in and read her lips?"

McCree pursed his. "They teach ya how to talk so nobody can read your lips pretty early on in Blackwatch training. I looked her over just before you got back an' she's got it down to a damn science."

Tracer sighed as she pushed her chair back and stared up at the skylight in the middle of the ceiling. With the storm, the natural light that had brought out the full glistening glory of the gilded decorations and shimmering extravagance of the room was lost. Though the chandeliers did still illuminate the room, the glamourous aesthetic was dimmed, and the shadows cast by the growing crowd of returning VIPs were shorter, blurred together much more easily, and were in danger of being lost entirely. "What about Faheera?" she said, putting an idea out there. "Has she gotten the Junkers to talk yet?"

McCree didn't verbally respond, but promptly activated a channel on the control board and gestured for her to speak into the microphone.

"Fareeha love, staying dry out there?" she cheerfully asked.

"Trying, at least." Her voice was scratchy beyond just regular earpiece distortion and the energy in her tone was gone. "You and McCree found any evidence on Widowmaker yet?"

"Working on it. Speaking of which, have you gotten the Junkers to say anything yet? We're fresh out of leads."

A boiling aggravation grew steadily more evident as she spoke. "I wish I had good news for you, but to say they're being uncooperative would be an understatement."

Before she could say anything else, Tracer and McCree suddenly heard Junkrat screaming off in the distance. "You gonna bring us in from the bloody rain or do ya plan on drownin' us like a pair of rats you fu-!" A lightning bolt suddenly tore across the sky, one that could even be seen through the skylight. No sooner had it vanished when a crack of thunder shook the ballroom and sounded through the channel with a loud bass resonance, cutting out the maniac's last words.

"Don't worry. Once I get something, I'll let you know," Fareeha assured. "Now, if you'll excuse me..."

Her words trailed off from English to Arabic, the angry inflection of which, as well as Junkrat's whines of "Not the face! _NOT THE FACE!_ ", gave indications that led Tracer to swiftly turn off the channel before the audio got too graphic. Slowly, she lifted herself out of her chair and surveyed the ballroom for just under a minute, finding the one point amidst the guests taking their seats at the tables before the speeches could begin that she was looking for.

Tracer sank back down into her chair, her face crinkled with dejection. "She's still here. Widowmaker's still standing around - probably dishing out details on our every move - the gala's about to end, and we're no closer to beating her than we were three hours ago!"

Winston, meanwhile, remained assured. "We've still got time. You and McCree still have the camera drones, Faheera's getting whatever information she can out of the two assets you captured, and Angela's still got her clutch as a last resort. We can still do this."

"Yeah, sure, but this don't seem right," McCree interjected, similarly unhappy. "Ain't it just a little too perfect that a pair of maniacs everybody knows the faces of get caught red-handed instead of any Talon agents? On top of that, we still haven't seen Reyes anywhere and everything I know about him says that he'd be on this party like a dog on a bone. For all we know, he's got more than just one assassin hiding in plain sight, only difference is that we ain't gonna see them 'till it's too late!" He sighed and shook his head he caught the volume of his voice reaching a dangerously conspicuous level. "Point is, we're missin' details here, details that we shoulda straightened out by now."

The gorilla's gaze turned stony and his chest puffed up. "We've been over this already. We can't just swoop in and take them out without evidence to back us up. You can't do anything if you're arrested or shot."

"Sorry big guy, but McCree's right," Tracer added on. "We joined back up with you because we didn't want to sit around while the bad guys got ahead of us. Tonight isn't showing any sort of change from what brought down the original Overwatch."

Winston's retort was cut off before it could begin when the voice of the PA system boomed once more. "Esteemed dignitaries, we invite you to take your seats. The final segment of tonight's ceremonies is about to begin."

The gorilla sighed and his eyes glanced downward as he spoke. "If we can do this right, we won't be on the defensive much longer. Talon will be scrambling to regain the ground they lost and we'll be able to take the fight to them like we did with Null Sector, but for now, we've got to keep the peace." He looked back up at the gunslinger and the bubbly young former pilot right in the eyes, showing them as much genuine hope and resolve as he could muster. "We've still got time. We just need to play lookout for a little longer. After that, we'll be able to take all the action we want."

Tracer and McCree's expressions slowly softened as their friend's words took effect. Turning towards each other, they shared wordless stares and gestures before looking back at the screen.

"Could never stay mad at you for long," she said. We'll do it. For peace."

McCree didn't say anything, but the grin that stretched up one side of his face filled in the blanks.

Winston brought up one last smile before cutting the feed. "For peace."

* * *

With the channel closed, Winston allowed his chest to deflate and his posture to collapse, exhaling as he slouched over in his tire-chair, his head drooping like a dying flower and his eyes half-closed to where he was seeing more of his own gut than his feet. His limbs and extremities grew ponderous and exhaustion swept over him, while his mind played through McCree and Tracer's concerns over and over again, each repetition adding to his drained feeling and forcing him to rub his temples to relieve a throbbing headache.

"Heavy is the head that wears the crown, I see," Athena remarked, cutting Winston's reflection short.

Winston scoffed. "I forgot Mina programmed you with Shakespeare."

"She didn't. I read _Henry IV_ after I heard Commander Morrison quote that line. Part of my continual upgrading protocols which, while programmed by Dr. Liao, were upgraded to their current specifications by you."

Winston snorted. It wasn't often that Athena exchanged dialogue, even though she was surprisingly witty in her own way.

"Your brain is producing substantial amounts of melatonin. You need to rest. I am capable of fulfilling your duties," she added.

He took in a lengthy breath as he craned his head upwards and cracked his knuckles. _This_ was the Athena he was more familiar with. "Thanks, but I'd like to see this to the end. Also, how many times have I told you not to monitor my vitals?"

"Twenty-seven, excluding just now. I only do so because you seem to be letting your job take a large toll on you."

Not quite knowing or wanting to respond immediately, Winston cricked his neck and lolled his head in a lazy motion, like a top losing speed. As he stretched it upward and felt the muscles pull and strain, the line of pictures from the old days on his headboard captured his attention. His gaze stopped on one in particular, a photograph of Jack Morrison, taken in the last years of the Golden Age.

Compared to the other images of the former Strike Commander, which showed a chipper, strapping, homegrown youth with golden blonde hair and a fire in his eyes, this one was quieter, more seasoned, weary. His figure, while still tall and muscled, was thinner, near to the point of being spindly. His hair had turned a cloudy grey, and scars and dark lines crisscrossed his sallow face. Winston could only assume that each one lingered with more than just an occasional tinge of pain. The once sky-blue eyes had dulled as well, their colour seemingly ebbing away through the streaks of blood-red that shot from the pupils like the spokes of a wheel. His expression was stoic, demanding respect but also, the gorilla could just make out, concealing a deep-rooted fatigue with all the professionalism he could muster.

 _Heavy is the head that wears the crown,_ he thought. _Or in this case, that leads Overwatch_.

He stared at the picture for a moment longer before rotating his look towards the screen that Athena most often used. "You probably got to see more of what happened behind the scenes than any of us," His voice sounded almost hesitant, as though he was afraid of where his inquiry might have led. "What was Jack like for the last little while? You know, when no one else was around."

Athena, in return, sounded taken aback. "I... am not sure that I should be divulging such information, Winston. Nor do I think that this is the time for-"

"I'd just like to know," he implored. "Please. I promise I won't tell anyone else."

The A.I. took advantage of a pause, letting the only sound in the Watchpoint be the whirring of her servers' fans before finally answering. "He was... tired. Much of his off time was spent in a similar posture to what you had adopted a minute ago. He wanted more than anything to help people and save lives, but he felt weighed down, helpless, and at times jaded."

At the same time, Winston leaned forward and gazed upon his reflection in one of the black parts of the screen. He studied his face carefully, running his fingers along the lines. "Jaded?"

"Every time the Director or someone else hamstrung Overwatch, every time we lost personnel and missions, it was as though he lost a part of himself. He'd lock himself in his office, order me to screen all his calls, and bury himself in paperwork for days. By the very end, the spark was gone. He seemed to hate Overwatch itself almost as much as he did Reyes for destroying it."

Winston's gaze moved from the lifeless picture of the Commander to a different one, this one taken less than a year ago. In it, Winston stood shoulder to shoulder with Faheera and Lucio, both of whom were beaming ear to ear. Behind them, Tracer, McCree, Mei, and Reinhardt had snuck in for a cheeky photobomb. Fond memories rekindled themselves inside the gorilla's mind, particularly the warm, open-armed welcome that the two new recruits had received.

Between the pictures and the memories, the new Commander of Overwatch found his posture straightening and his expression going steely. "That was then. This is now. McCree and Lena are right: We need more details."

"How can I help?" Athena asked, eager and proper.

"You monitor for any sort of unordinary energy fluctuations. Heat signatures, electro-magnetics, the works. Meanwhile, I'll run a loop on all the recorded Talon comms. Maybe that will allow for us to decrypt it."

"Affirmative. Activating electro-magnetic spectrum sweep and heat signature anomaly detection protocols."

With a few rapidly typed commands, the holoscreen of the computer had a new screen called up, one that showed the gathered seconds of Talon's intercepted communications on a waveform line. Likewise, Winston set to work on repeating the feed without a moment's hesitation, simultaneously typing in an algorithm to decipher the enigma he had been presented. Once again, the words of Dr. Harold ran through Winston's head, giving him renewed motivation.

" _Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be._ "

* * *

As the lights dimmed once again and the curtains drew back, Lucio strutted out onto the stage and halted at the mic stand, where he was greeted by a standing ovation. In a single, suave flourish, he placed his weight on his heels and, pushing off from the mic stand, spun around in front of it and took a bow before spinning back around behind it.

"So y'all seem to still be doing good, am I right? You enjoy the show?"

His question was answered by another thunderous applause, the loudest and longest of the night that he accentuated with multiple bows and gestures for more.

When it finally died down, the consummate showman continued. "No seriously, tell me what you really think!"  
The crowd collectively chortled before continuing their ovation. At the control panel, McCree chuckled lightly at the DJ's wit.

"Man's got a knack for it, huh Lena?" he remarked, but Tracer took no notice, opting instead to continue gazing at the fresh images of Widowmaker that the drones were providing, her eyes locked forward and unblinking, like a cat waiting to pounce on a mouse.

"Hey, you listening?" the cowboy asked, moderately puzzled. "I thought you'd be enjoyin' this."

"I just want to finish this up," she answered bluntly and without diverting her gaze. "They're still at least one step ahead of us, so we shouldn't be faffing about."

McCree was offput. Tracer was rarely, if ever, too engrossed to pass up friendly talk, much less turn it down in so unflinchingly. He looked back towards the stage, so far off from his location, where Lucio was still in full swing.

"So, how's about we get down to the real business here?" the DJ proposed. "We're coming off the best round of peace talks in human-Omnic history, so there's a few sentients who'd like to come up and say a few words about it. How 'bout that for capping off the night, whaddaya say?"

The crowd responded once again with spirited applause.

"That's what I like to hear!" he proclaimed in return. "First up on the list, we got a Nobel Prize winner in physics with a soft spot for reality TV, give it up for Omar L: Model Six Point Two!" As the crowd applauded, Lucio moved out of the way of the mic stand with a quick slide and gestured that it was all theirs before break-dancing his way back to stage right to await the first of the orators among the night's dignitaries, an Omnic dressed in tails, wearing a set of glasses over its eyes and a turban on its head.

As the speeches began, McCree took advantage of a perceived lull in activity to spark up a talk with Tracer again.

"Hey, sorry 'bout earlier. I just thought you'd be a bit more..." He put on a purposefully atrocious British accent. "Cheers, love! Toodle-pip and cheerio!"

A smirk crept up the side of Tracer's face. "I do _not_ sound like that," she chuckled.

"Ah, agree to disagree," he joked. "I'd just figured since the DJ up there'd had you in a good mood earlier that you'd have liked-"

"And I do. Lucio's been doing a great job. It's just that I've had some bad experiences with not being ahead of the curve. It leads to good people dying."

McCree momentarily pondered what Tracer was saying before he realized what she was getting at. He'd seen the newsfeeds of the tragedy, grainy footage showing a rooftop explosion followed by both Tracer and Widowmaker freefalling from said rooftop. No sooner had Tracer blinked out of the way of an oncoming bullet, that very same projectile had buried itself deep into Tekartha Mondatta's heart, sending the Omnic's metal frame flying backwards onto the cobblestones in front of a large gathering of followers. At the same time, he could feel his metal arm stiffen up. He winced as he looked down at the prosthetic; Though he'd had it on for nearly eight years now, his capability enhanced and his wound mended, there were times when the pain flared up, forcing attention to be brought upon itself and the roots of its problem.

His voice was marked with a quiet humility. "Yeah, I don't like nobody being a step ahead of me neither. I'm sorry."

Tracer finally broke her concentration on the screens upon hearing this and swiveled her chair in his direction, smiling warmly. "Apology accepted," she said warmly before offering a fist bump. "Now, let's get this done."

McCree answered with his own. "Cocked, locked, and ready to rock."

* * *

The next ten minutes were completely silent between the two, their focus squarely on the drones, the eyes in the sky they offered, and the triumphant orations of the assembled guests. Despite still finding nothing that could break the mission wide open, their focus remained sharp as a tack.

Until it didn't

"Y'know, speaking of gettin' things done..." McCree suddenly broke the pause with.

Tracer turned back towards her colleague, not knowing what precisely he was talking about. Once she saw that he had produced a carton of cigarettes from his jacket, she leaned forward and slapped her index and middle fingers against her right temple. "You have got to be joking."

"Hey, man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," he replied, playing at an innocent demeanor. Besides, I'll only be going through one."

"Define 'one'," she requested firmly. She had heard stories about McCree's 'smoke breaks' from several other members over the years, and none of them bode well with regards to brevity.

He opened up the carton and plucked out a single cigarette, twiddling with it as he placed the package back in his jacket. "This a good definition?" he said with moderate, but growing anticipation.

Tracer shook her head slowly and smiled incredulously. "Are you sure you couldn't have gotten this out of the way sooner? We're at kind of an important moment here and you know it."

"I'll be right outside. Five minutes, tops. Just long enough to do one in before I get completely drenched by that rainstorm. Call me right back in if you need me, but I know you can handle it just fine 'till then. Here." He tossed the carton, sans the cigarette he'd already removed, into Tracer's hands. "Just to insure that I'll be back soon."

Tracer sat back up and smirked. "Fine, but don't expect me to cover for you if Winston calls in."

"With any luck, I'll be back before he knows. Besides, it's not like we're going to find our big lead at this exact time, right?" he asked rhetorically as he raised himself out of his chair.

"You never know. Just remember: Five minutes, like you said." She didn't watch as he hopped off the side of the control centre, skirted around the outer wall, and slipped out the door into the gardens, instead focusing back on the camera drones, vigilant and ready for the next move.

Even so, she gritted her teeth under her lips. A distraction like this in the eleventh hour, she knew, could very much have meant the difference between victory and defeat.

A difference she also knew she could never let come into being, no matter what.

* * *

The moment McCree was outside, his posture drooped with disappointment; Before he'd even taken two steps outside, he was already half-soaked by the rain. Quickly sidestepping to where the door and the wall met, he turned his head upwards and scanned for any sort of overhang or ledge that would provide him with shelter. There was one, a hundred feet off to his left, that seemed to protrude out far enough to be useful as a dry spot.  
 _Dry and empty. That'll do good,_ he thought to himself. _Probably shouldn't have given Lena the whole box, but c'est la vie, I guess._

Quickly but carefully, he shimmied along the wall towards the ledge, trying to minimize the amount of rain that drenched him. When he finally reached the overhang, his jacket was sopping wet and his boots were beginning to fill up as well. Once safely out of the rain, he wiped away the droplets in his hair with his hand before reaching into his jacket and retrieving the cigarette as well as a shiny metal lighter. Despite the miserable conditions, he now had the next five-odd minutes to himself, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

At least, that was his intention.

"Never fails. Every single time I get sent to guard an external perimeter, it rains. Insult to injury, I didn't even remember to bring my damn raincoat! Mom's never gonna let me hear the end of it."

McCree froze in place at the sound of the voice like a deer after hearing a twig snap in the woods, afraid to move an inch in case it gave his position away. His eyes darted in the direction that the voice had come from, just a few more feet to the left in what appeared to be an area of the wall where it dove inward about three feet and continued to the left for ten before returning to the original, more outward path.

"I mean, why'd they put me outside anyway? Everyone knows I'm the guy to go to when the fighting starts. I can take on anyone, am I right?" it continued.

The voice itself was of particular interest; A thick Lower New York accent with a superiority complex and an enjoyment for fighting. While remembering every person who fit that description would have required an entire Omnic server farm, this voice was familiar, oddly so. He knew that he'd heard it before somewhere, but dredging through his entirely human memory only turned up blanks.

"OK, sure, those two Aussie nutcrackers kicked my ass and blew the rest of my squad to hell, but that was way back. I could take 'em now. They've softened up if the Amari kid and the monkey's pet project can beat 'em."

McCree's eyes shot open like the gate of an angry bull at a riding contest. Now he knew where that voice was from. _Sonuvabitch, sometimes I hate when I'm right._

His right hand slowly placed the unlit cigarette inside the side pocket of his pants, then added the lighter before discreetly inching its way up and inside his jacket, pulling out the Peacekeeper from its shoulder holster. A methodical check-over of the gun revealed that despite the jacket being soaked, the weapon itself was mostly dry. _Thank God for quality craftsmanship,_ he thought as he cocked the hammer of the gun back and placed both hands on the grip.

Stepping lightly and moving deliberately, he slowly tiptoed out from under the ledge towards the dip in the wall, where the voice was continuing to speak.

"Yeah, maybe I will, but I ain't gonna disobey the commander's orders just to show the guys I still gotta pair. I'm fine with waiting a bit longer."

The brick and mortar crevasse was shrouded by darkness, shadows from the outer lights whose beams had overlooked this small, seemingly innocuous detail. As he crept closer, the first voice became clearer, as did a second one that previously couldn't be made out over the pattering of rain. _Two of 'em_ _,_ he realized. _But there's gotta be more. Blackwatch squads always got at least seven. How'd they keep unseen this whole time?_

Finally reaching the edge of the wall before it dove inward, he twisted his neck to the side and forced his eyes as far to the left as they could go, hoping to peer around the edge without being seen in return.

"Yeah, I never liked those metal morons either," the first voice sneered. "It's gonna be fun watching everyone get get all pissy and blame everyone else for it. You know they're saying that EMPs should be banned from warfare now, like what they did with gas who knows how long ago? Personally, I think us using one tonight is too good for 'em. An EMP on the Omnics, that is.

At the same time, a flash of lightning pierced the cover of the shadows, unveiling the owners of the pair of voices for McCree to see. Both were dressed in the uniforms of security guards, the exact same ones that had been standing at the exits of the ballroom all night long. The first voice belonged to a mid-height, strongly built man with a hooked nose and oversized ears, while the other, quieter voice belonged to a pear-shaped man with a brown duster on his upper lip.

McCree's head shot back from overlooking the dip. _Kowalski and Tepesch._ His expression went blank as a feeling of terrible urgency swept through his mind. In just under two minutes, he'd discovered more than what he and three other people had been able to find all night, and the thought of being one step behind, especially now and especially considering what had just been revealed, was almost too much to bear.

Tightening his grip on his revolver, he knew the likelihood that they'd seen him peering around the corner was high; He'd have to drop them. After that: Inform Winston, Tracer, everyone, about what he'd learned and do it five minutes ago. Either that, or add a lot more red to his ledger.

The choice was simple, but he didn't get the chance to carry it out.

Before he'd had the time to raise so much as a foot, McCree was rendered unconscious in an instant by a heavy-handed blow to the back of the head that sent him crashing down to the stone walkway.

Thunder sounded above as Kowalski rounded the corner, grinning with vengeful malice as he picked up the dropped revolver. "Gents," he hissed. " this is gonna be fun."


	8. Out Of Time

Leaning on a roof-mounted heating unit in the pouring rain, waiting for the next order to be called out, was the last thing Sombra enjoyed doing.

The Mexican hacker sighed audibly, running her right hand through her drenched hair in order to keep it to one side and not interfere with the strips of hardware interface that she had grafted into her skull years ago. _Ugh, they'd better not start running_ , she grumbled in her head, looking to see if wet streaks of her hair's lavender highlights were covering her fingers. _Should have brought a_ maldita _umbrella_.

Having seen that her highlights weren't running and with still no cure for her boredom, she sighed and tapped her foot impatiently as her mind found its way to thoughts of what she'd have far preferred to do on nights such as this one: A Los Muertos rave, a few rounds at Calaveras, perhaps some globetrotting to make some new "friends", or preferably, all of the above. In truth, anything was better than having orders barked into her ear at random intervals by the black-clad buzzkill and mindless murder puppet she'd been teamed up with. Unfortunately, the punishment for disobeying orders was one even she knew to fear, so for the time being she stayed waiting on the heating unit, no matter .

Thankfully, sneaking around the palace of Versailles in plain sight did have its benefits. For one, the hors d'oeuvres were divine; she had used her high-tech cloak to capitalize on the opportunity to slip in amidst the crowd and steal a bite. Better still was how the small-minded yes-men that she was partnered with got so irritated whenever she got off a good one on them. But certainly her favourite part of the night, she'd decided for herself, was the fact that so many big names representing so many high places were all packed into one room at one time, allowing for a leisurely indulgence of her ongoing project: Solving the supposedly unsolvable puzzle, a Gordian Knot whose unraveling had defined both of her lives.

With a few taps on a holo-keyboard she summoned a long catalog of connections and stockpiled secrets, each one as dirty as it was elusive and each one the result of an ongoing search that felt like it would never end, but that had too much at stake for her to give up on all the same. Memories flashed through her mind in rapid succession as she shut off the hologram and closed her eyes. She saw the look of shock and terror on the face of Olivia Colomar, an eighteen-year old hacker and blackmailer too ambitious and naïve for her own good, as she stumbled onto a secret bigger than anything that she had coveted before.

Ever since the orphan had taken to digging through the Internet in order to put food in her stomach, rumours had abounded in hacker circles about something as well-hidden as it was lethal. _La Conspiracion_ \- The Conspiracy - they'd called it, and they'd said finding it, let alone cracking it, was impossible, a Dangerous Game that no one had survived. Young Olivia had never found a challenge she couldn't hack, blackmail, or squirm her way out of, so why back down now? For months she'd searched every dark corner of the Web, eavesdropped on every hushed whisper, and spied on every scared lackey, but the end of the maze felt no closer.

She discovered nothing for so long, only to accidentally tumble face-first down the rabbit-hole and discover everything.

Instead of finding a wonderland of dirty secrets, however, she found a twisting maze of intrigue and revelation that led to the most powerful people and organizations in the world, guarded fiercely by fearsome beasts and spectres and puppeteered by a skilled and ruthless master, his existence only ever indicated by an eye marked with three dots on the top and bottom. Young, foolish Olivia was able to escape by finding the thinnest of threads that led to the exit, but she had seen too much, and the puppet master had had his minions follow her out. With his strings everywhere, Olivia Colomar, wounded and terrified, was forced to seek refuge in the same cracks of society that she had been raised in.

It was there, tucked away in an overlooked corner of the world, that she called upon the philosophy that street life in Dorado had taught her right from the start. Sombra remembered it daily, let its guidance determine her every action.

_Everything can be hacked, and everyone_.

Olivia Colomar had been hacked, plain and simple, and against _La Conspiracion_ there was no room for error. _What do you do when you've been hacked?_ she had contemplated. The answer, it turned out, was simple.

_Shut down, r_ _eboot the system, and come back better than before_.

A year later, from the hole that Olivia had crawled into to die like a beaten dog emerged Sombra, wiser, craftier, more elusive, and more dangerous than anything that the post-Crisis hacker culture had produced before. The world was taken by storm by her strings of corporate takedowns and scandalous leaks, but it was her more unnoticed actions that proved even more impactful.

The Conspiracy had taught Olivia a valuable lesson in that whoever had the information held all the cards, and it was something that Sombra had taken to heart. Each 'friend' gained behind closed doors was another card in her hand, another step towards finishing what a dead woman had started. Each alliance, each piece of blackmail, was a means towards the end. Talon had been her most lucrative means thus far; Very close to the center of _La_ _Conspiracion's_ web, uncannily so, and their own resources and connections meant that she had a long reach with regards to the collection and control of pieces.

She grinned lightly, her eyes still closed and her mind still reflecting. The night promised great things, and she would be there to collect.

Politics? _Meh. Bunch of pavos reales strutting around and flashing their feathers, mostly unaware of where the real power is. Akande's world, not mine_.

Reaper's vengeance and Widowmaker's bloodlust? _They've got enough edge to cut steel, and they're just_ _pawns_ _in the Dangerous Game. They've been hacked and they know it, but they don't see the strings tied around them_.

What she wanted was, again, simple. With nearly two hundred celebrities, politicians, corporate giants, scientific visionaries, and military leaders expected to die, their secrets and assets, both of which she knew didn't need to be about someone living to be useful, would suddenly be treasures without a keeper, primed for her taking. Picking them up before the bodies were cold was insuring that they were in good hands. The Dangerous Game, after all, was not yet complete, and merely winning it wasn't going to be enough for the phoenix who had risen from Olivia Colomar's ashes.

Sombra's earpiece suddenly blared static, rudely tearing her out of of her memories. She opened her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh as the voice on the other end spoke. "All points, this is Widowmaker. _La docteur et son petit copain_ are about to begin their speech. I am in position to initiate,"

"All undercover operatives have reported in as well. They won't be able to get off the stage," Reaper growled over the channel in response. "This is what we've been waiting for, so DON'T screw it up. As of right now, T-minus five minutes until EMP activation."

Sombra rolled her eyes and playfully smiled; He was funny when he was trying to be angry. "Sheesh, you couldn't get anyone else to do all the heavy lifting, Gabe?"

"Lose the tone. You know your job, so do it. Mess up, and Doomfist is going to be the least of your problems."

Sombra smirked. _An empty threat. How cute._ "You just need to stop worrying, Gabe. You know I don't let you down."

"Except when you do. Reaper out." With that, the feed turned to static.

Sombra pushed herself off of the heating unit, crossing her arms and shivering briefly as the heat escaped into the cold night air and was annihilated under the barrage of rain droplets. A quick diagnostic of her implants showed everything to be ready to go on her command.

But first, she had one other matter to take care of, one that added pleasure to the business she'd been charged with.

As she turned to her left, twenty feet away stood a target of opportunity that she'd kept in the corner of her eye for most of the night, oblivious to the danger that lurked in the shadows.

Her head lowered and she grinned with lethal anticipation and her left hand flickered with purple energy. With soft, deliberate steps she stalked her quarry, the unlucky prey of a ruthless predator from which there was no escape.

_Now_ _this_ , she thought. _This will be worth my time._

* * *

"Y'know, I'm kinda wondering something," Junkrat giggled, flashing his toothy grin. "That ain't the only rocket you could hold nice n' tight, I'd bet. Wanna take one a' mine for a spin?"

Fareeha seethed, forcing down the irritation that she'd been trying to keep from erupting like a volcano for the past hour. "No," she stated with extreme bluntness. "Now make this easier for yourself and just tell me what you know."

"Oh pa-leeze, I've got better plea bargains from the Yankee feds, and I know that don't sound like nothing, but just you wait 'til ya hear what they call us over there, eh Roady?"

Before the maniac could say any more, he found himself face-to-face with the barrel of Fareeha's hand-held rocket launcher. "It's been a long night and I'm out of patience, so just make this simple." she seethed. "What is Talon planning to do?"

Junkrat's eyes crossed and his neck stretched backwards until his head bumped against the concrete blocks. "W-well then, when you put it that way-" he squirmed, but before he could say anything else, he was elbowed in the ribs.

"Shut. Up," Roadhog grunted to his compatriot.

"Oi, don't you shut me up! I'm in the middle of..." Junkrat rotated his head back towards Faheera and eyeballed her scowling down at him, her finger wrapped around the trigger. "...A charming, friendly conversation over here with this lovely lady who's _definitely_ not going to rocket my arse to Tokyo? Please?" he mewled meekly.

Roadhog exhaled loudly in frustration. "The cash."

It took the fiery-haired rat a few seconds to take in what'd just been said; his attention was almost solely on the weapon pressing against his nose. "I mean, she's tall, s-smart, and definitely not going to kill m-Oooooooh, roight! Ahem, PISS OFF, ya oversized canary! Why don'tcha go jump off the roof!"

Before Fareeha could react to Junkrat's insults, she involuntarily dropped her weapon and her suit began to convulse and spasm. The wings on her armour folded in and dropped down and her helmet's heads-up display frazzled with a pixel image of a sugar skull before making her wince as it shorted out in a blinding flash. She desperately tried to activate her boosters to escape, but her armour's strength had been completely sapped, the joints stiffened and the metal plates weighed her down like a cinderblock. She crumbled to the roof with a heavy clunk, the suit locked shut. Junkrat, meanwhile, looked over at his compatriot in surprise, the loose wheels in his head trying to figure out how he'd managed to do that until Roadhog elbowed him again, pointing out the sparks of lavender-tinted electricity.

"Fareeha to all points, Mayday! Mayday! My armour's just been shut down by some kind of virus; I can't fly or move and all my weapons are offline. Requesting immediate backup!"

There was no reply. "Fareeha to all points, please respond! Can you hear me? Anyone?!"

No matter how frantic she called out though, all she heard on the other side was static.

In the midst of her distress signals, Fareeha felt the weight of someone's foot step on her back. She tried to crane her neck upwards and behind to see who it was, but the locked joints on her suit kept her from rolling herself over. Further attempts to wrench and wriggle herself free only led to the unseen attacker pushing her towards the roof's edge, inch by inch, her blood running colder as the drop got closer.

Her mind raced through whatever options were left. She attempted to reach an emergency eject lever built into the suit's thigh, but with every joint stiff it was a task that proved as impossible as stretching for her rocket launcher. As the attacker's foot pushed her closer to the edge, she could see over it down to the solid pavement, a hundred fifty feet straight down. A sheer drop and a sudden stop.

"Who's behind this?" Fareeha demanded. " Show yourself!" Her head dangled over the edge, the rest of her about to follow. Soon desperation turned to rage. "When I get out of this you're in for a world of pain, Junkrat!"

"Oh, I ain't doing nothin' but enjoyin' the show right now; you still got me tied up here," he replied fiendishly. "But I'm pretty sure I know who's got you about to take a dive on ya pointy little nose, though."

"Who is it?" Her upper body balanced on the ledge like a seesaw, her head facing straight towards the ground. The attacker stopped for a moment, Fareeha literally hanging in the balance, to kick her rocket launcher over the edge as well. "Tell me!"

"I said I know who it is, I don't recall sayin' I'd tell ya, now did I?" he giggled. "It seems to me like you gotta go now. Have a nice flight!"

A bolt of lightning raced across the sky as the rat broke into maniacal laughter. Below her, Fareeha beheld a long shadow cast upon the ground, darkness poised to make a decisive strike. With a final push, she was sent over the roof edge entirely, falling like a stone and contorting uncontrollably before hitting the solid pavement with a hard, cracking thud, her pleas for help unheard and the danger still unseen.

* * *

Up above, the assailant materialized into sight, a lavender outline filled in to reveal Sombra as she leaned over the roof's edge to admire her work. Below, Fareeha lay stationary on the cracked ground, splayed out motionless and bent in grim directions.

"You were listening when I told her to jump off the roof, weren't ya?" Junkrat inquired with a giggle.

Sombra turned around to where the Junkers were handcuffed and strode up to them before crouching down next to them. "'You hook 'em, I'll cook 'em," she bantered.

Roadhog shot her an angry glare from under his mask immediately upon hearing her.

" _Relajarse_ , I was quoting you. You're not going all serious on me like Gabe, are you?" At the same time, the lines along the glove on her left hand glowed bright purple, and three energy tendrils sprouted forth from her fingertips and reached behind Junkrat into the keyhole of the handcuffs. Within a few seconds, the shackles had been broken loose and the peg-legged psychopath jumped to his feet with the vigor of a free man. Within another few seconds, his pig-faced accomplice was similarly unleashed and the rat was chattering away about things that Sombra didn't care to pay attention to. Rather, she stood off to one side, looking mildly disinterested and running her hands through her soaked hair to keep it away onto her neural implants. "No need to thank me," she eventually butted in.

Junkrat, after twisting his head her way with a cartoonishly wide grin, strode over and leaned in close, close enough to where Sombra could see the singes on his hair and the pointy nose on his rodent-like face was almost poking her. "So, we gonna get an advance on our paycheck or what? I don't really think this was a part a' the deal." He held out an open prosthetic right palm, rubbing his thumb along his other four fingers.

Sombra put on a fake smile as she pushed the palm away with one hand and Junkrat's face with the other. "You getting a bit ahead, _mi_ _amigo_ ," she said with a mocking nonchalance. "Sorry to tell you so late, but you getting caught was actually the plan. Not the _whole_ plan, but still."

Junkrat stood motionless for a moment, his beady eyes the size of oranges and his mouth agape. When he did manage to start chattering again, his movements were even more exaggerated than usual. "Wait, um... WHAT?! You mean, that you hired us, to get beat up by a bunch of tin can-huggers, _and we don't get to blow up a single bloody one of them?!_ " Behind him, Roadhog rumbled with a murderous resonance as he stomped his way towards her

Sombra raised her hands defensively. "Hey, hey, _uno momento por favor_. I'm just the messenger, but," She tilted her head and looked towards them with a suave expression. "I think I can sweeten the deal."

Gradually, the furious duo, paused in their tracks by the proposition, swiveled their heads in each others direction. Though they weren't saying anything, Sombra could see their eyes rotating back and forth between themselves and her. After a few seconds, Junkrat turned back towards her, placing his hands at his hips. "Alright, whaddaya got?"

Sombra grinned and raised an eyebrow. She held out her left hand and from it appeared an image of a large pile of guns, bombs, and other assorted weapons, all of them makeshift-looking and painted in the dusty yellow colours of the Junkers. "All your gear is sitting fifty yards away next to a great big dropship inbetween the buildings; you can't miss it. In about..." she trailed off briefly as she summoned a second hologram with the time. "...Thirty seconds, those same Overwatch agents who beat you as well as about two hundred Omnics are going to be completely helpless. If you're quick, you'll get your choice before Gabe starts ordering you around. Just think of it like foxes in a henhouse."

As quickly as it arrived, Junkrat's incredulous rage disappeared, replaced by a clownish grin and wild-eyed delight. He shook wildly with exhilaration as he looked over at Roadhog. "Ooh, now that sounds good, don't it?" he said

The masked pig looked down on his partner, then at Sombra, then back at Junkrat, then at Sombra again. He was motionless for a moment before he nodded slowly with approval.

" _Excelente_ ," she proclaimed while clapping her hands together. "Good to see we're all on the same page." When the Junkers just stood in place for seemingly no reason, she slouched with frustration before shooing them off with a quick hand gesture in the direction they were supposed to go. "What're you waiting for? The Omnics aren't going to blow themselves up. ¡ _Ándale_! ¡ _Rapido_! Go!"

As she watched them take off towards their stolen stockpile, Sombra chuckled. _Funny, dangerous, easy to hack_ , she mused to herself. _I think I'll keep them_.

She next pivoted on her heels back towards the palace, crossing one arm over her stomach and propping up the other on it. With a sweeping motion, the holographic timer that she had called up was brought back to front and center, showing that there were only a few seconds left until the time of reckoning.

**0:05**

She smiled with satisfaction. _Time's_ _not always on your side, chica_.

**0:04**

**0:03**

With another hand wave, a second hologram was brought forth, this one showing a CGI image of the one and the one and a half-foot long cylinder that was on the verge of breaking the back of the peace of her time.

**0:02**

Underneath the projection, Spanish text read that the EMP was ready for activation and was charging up to release its deadly package.

**0:01**

_Apagando las luces._

**0:00**

She pressed a finger against the image of the EMP, which lit up with a purple-pink hue and changed the text below to say that the activation was successful. The rain-soaked perch she stood on overlooked the back of the palace, and from her angle she could see the lights of the ballroom chandeliers flicker and the ornate glass windows to the outside project her lavender-shaded electricity.

She smiled heartily. _A job well done, if I do say so myself. But then again, it's not like I do anything less._

Still, she knew, there was still one last thing left to do.

She rested her head on her two fingers as they pressed against her earpiece. "Oh Gabe, dinner's ready," she said in a sing-song tone. "You'll want to get there before Amelie steals all the good ones."

"About time," Reaper hissed, his voice dripping with a sadistic glee. "Get back to the ship and monitor the EMP. We'll be a while."

Sombra beckoned her hologram back in front of her again as the channel cut out. A quick study-over showed nothing out of the ordinary, meaning that she was finally able to get out of that god-forsaken rain that had soaked her jacket clean through and was probably waterlogging her implants. Before she could leave for the ship, she stopped for a second as something caught her eye. Off to the left in the distance, along the wall of the palace, she could see a trio of guards struggling with what looked to be a recently caught prisoner who, judging by the kangaroo kick she saw him administer, still had plenty of fight left in him.

Summoning forth another holographic panel, she brought it up to eye level and ran her fingers along the side in a semi-circle motion, as though she were adjusting the lenses on a pair of binoculars. Upon the magnification of the image, she believed she had seen the the face somewhere before. With the snap of her fingers, it came to her: The _gringo_ that Gabe hated so much, the same cowboy that she'd seen passed out at Calaveras on Christmas Eve a few years ago.

The novel concept of informing Reaper about his one errant adversary rather crossed her mind, but it didn't take her long to choose an answer. "Pfft, nah." _Might as well make it interesting or Gabe'll go soft. Plus,_ la rata y el puerco _will_ _like playing with someone_ _feisty_.

With that, she crossed one arm over her chest and propped the other one's elbow on her hand as she de-pixellated with a flare of purple light, vanishing into thin air and reforming back inside the dimly-lit carrying compartment of the Talon dropship, where she leaned against a wall and smiled with a combination of snide self-confidence and assured triumph.

* * *

_**Seconds earlier...** _

"...And though my reputation was made in times of war," orated an East Asian woman with lavish medals adorning her drab green uniform. "I look forward to reaping the fruits of our labour, as the olive branch of peace grows outward and flowers all across the globe."

The room lit up with applause as she stepped back from the microphone stand and let Lucio take her place.

"Li Min-Seo, everybody; Big round of applause for the general, whaddaya say?"

The crowd responded in exactly the way the night's MC expected them to, which coaxed a chuckle out of him. "Y'all been a great crowd, you know that? Without you I'd just be some guy tellin' bad jokes and trying to shamelessly promote my albums; Know what I'm sayin?"

He stopped only long enough to take a breath. "Point is that you are all awesome, and y'all're gonna live on forever for what you've achieved together. You're the real heroes, and as a very good friend of mine puts it, 'heroes never die'."

The assembled dignitaries all stood to offer the most roaring applause of the night, as well as a chorus of cheers and whistles. Lucio promptly about-faced and backflipped over the mic stand before turning, taking a theatrical bow, and beckoning for more applause once again.

As the applause finally died down, the MC spoke up. "And speaking of which, how's about we cap off the night with some words from a couple of those good friends of mine? Please give it up for Doctor Angela Ziegler and Genji Shimada!"

The spotlight that had followed Lucio's every move left his visage behind and shone upon the table that the doctor and the cyborg were sitting at. As the crowd gave them an ovation, Genji offered an arm to his date, which she graciously accepted before promptly tugging upon to lead him up the stage, pausing only when he snatched up her clutch and handed it over to her.

As they made their way up onto the stage and stepped into Lucio's place behind the mic stand, the congregated VIPs saw Angela, her dress glistening in the light, bring Genji in close and steal a kiss, a move met with an approving crescendo of cheers and whistles from those who saw it.

For Winston and Tracer, two of the witnesses who should have been happiest to see it, it was but a footnote. Their attention was being kept on the increasingly frantic search for Talon's endgame pieces.

"Have you tried McCree yet? He should have been back half an hour ago!" Tracer stated, angry but also concerned.

Winston's growing distress wasn't quite as panicky, manifesting instead as extreme focus. "Athena, status update."

"No signs of anything out of the ordinary, just as it was when you last asked twelve point six seconds ago," the computer hummed, sounding level-headed as always despite the crackling tension. "As well, Ms. Oxton has asked you to attempt to contact Jesse again."

The gorilla scientist, absorbed by the task of decrypting Talon's audio frequency, made only a shooing gesture and an uninterested grunt.

Tracer leaned in closer to the screen, her eyebrows arched with worry. "Winston? Love? I know you're still there; I can see you. Have you gotten in touch with McCree?"

Athena finally broke the tense pause. "I'm afraid that Jesse has not answered at all. Perhaps he smuggled out more cigarettes when he left?"

In response, Tracer picked up the carton, full save for a single spot, and held in front of the monitor that had been tasked with the face-cam from Gibraltar.

Now Athena's voice began to betray concern. "That is indeed troublesome."

"I'd call it more than that. Angela and Genji's speech is almost done and he's nowhere to be found. Widowmaker's got to make a move, now or never."

Across the room, the couple had the crowd enthralled by their inspiring words as the drones silently buzzing overhead, still looking for the slightest indication of trouble. As for their person of interest, the icy assassin continued to stare blankly at the stage from her seat, occasionally placing a finger on her earpiece to deliver and receive the same messages Winston was working to decipher.

"Perhaps I could try Fareeha's communications," Athena proposed. What should have been a simple patching-in, however, was unfortunately not so, and the unusually long wait on her end let Tracer know exactly what was going on.

She slumped back into her chair, her eyes wide as could be and beads of stressful perspiration rolling down her forehead. Her breaths became shallow and her heart pounded inside her chest as her face and extremities began to feel cold. As a lock of hair fell over her face she inclined her head towards the skylight, where a clap of thunder and a streak of lightning tore across the sky, revealing the dark shadows lurking behind every corner and every being in the room. One in particular, Tracer could see, seemed to stretch out from outside the building, looking over the building and entering through the skylight to be seen only for a split second before returning to whatever unseen hiding place it was in, like a predator peering out of its hiding place just long enough to regain a bearing on its prey's position before returning to wait for the opportune moment.

She only let herself fall into this state of panic for an instant before a slow, stiff inhale and a rapid succession of eye-blinks brought her tenuously back to her senses and allowed her to place her focus on the camera drones again. With the remote, she swiveled the eye of one of the drones back over at the blue-skinned murderer of Mondatta, who had just now draped a light coat over herself. Looking into her unholy yellow eyes through the plastic hovering flies on the wall, Tracer saw the same unwavering focus, the same deadly, calculating precision, the same buried desire clamoring to be released by the pull of the trigger and the spilling of blood as that fateful night on the rooftops of King's Row. Even worse still was how Widowmaker stood in the midst of several Omnics as the camera panned out, evoking an extreme sense of outrage as memories of what carnage was wrought in the aftermath of that faithful night, and how it had swallowed up Tracer and Iggy alike...

The mild clattering of her nails on the control board's keys let Tracer know that her hands were shaking, a realization that, in turn, led to her recognizing the cold chill running down her spine, followed by the tears that were building up in her eyes and the deep-cut hurt that she saw in her reflection off a black screen on the panel.

_No,_ she thought to herself. _Not again._

She reached underneath the table and pulled out the accelerator, going through the de-miniaturization process and loosening the harnesses without taking her eyes off the screens for a single instant.

Up front, Angela and Genji's speech was on its final words, the crowd hanging onto every one of them. With a final, triumphant proclamation of the arrival of a bright and prosperous future, they ended their address with the raising of their intertwined arms, hands grasped together as a powerful symbol to complement their words. These were met with the roaring approval of the entire audience, and Lucio even stepped forward to gesture for more praise to be sent their way.

A small, flickering red light on the panel alerted Tracer to Widowmaker's movement. In the raucous environment created by the long applause, the assassin slipped her way through the crowd, eyes front on the successful orators for whom the applause was for. Peering over at the Gibraltar screen again, Tracer saw Winston still tunnel-visioned on his work. As she tightened the harnesses on her accelerator, Athena piped up. "Ms. Oxton, why have you strapped on your chronal accelerator?"

"I'm sorry," she answered, her voice tinged with regret as she fastened the last of the harnesses and felt the centerpiece's glow turn radiant. "but we're out of time." With that, she was gone in a flash of blue.

"Winston!" Athena called urgently, not wasting any time. "Winston, you must listen. Widowmaker is making her move and Ms. Oxton is pursuing!"

He didn't reply.

"Winston! Winston, answer me! Will you take your focus away from that stupid recording for one sec-"

Her words were cut off by the sudden sound of a French-accented whisper of a voice, purring over a scratchy intercom. " _All points, this is Widowmaker. La docteur et son petit copain are about to begin their speech. I am in position to initiate._ "

" _All undercover operatives have reported in as well. They won't be able to get off the stage,_ " a raspy growl that they were all unfortunately familiar with followed up.

Finally having cracked their codes, Winston finally allowed his intense concentration to lift its weight off his shoulders. He unfurled himself from the hunched-over position he had been in and rubbed his eyes gently. As he removed his hands, however, he both heard and caught sight of something that sapped the colour from his face almost instantly.

" _As of right now, T-minus five minutes until EMP activation,_ " the growling voice stated. Underneath the wavelength, Winston saw what the time signature read:

**Audio captured: 4 min 55 sec ago**.

With reflexes that neither he nor Athena knew he had, the gorilla activated Tracer's comm. "Lena, wait! It's a trap! Lena? _Lena!_ "

Despite his desperate shouts, there was no answer. Tracer's concentration was solely on her enemy, the evil witch who had stolen peace from her home with a single action and threatened to steal it from the entire world. As she weaved through the cluster of VIPs, she closed in on a clearing right at the foot of the stage, where Widowmaker now stood, dropping the overcoat and reaching for what could only be one thing, Tracer knew. With a brilliant blue streak, she lunged forth and tackled the assassin to the ground just as she was about to attack.

"Where is it? Where's the gun?" Tracer demanded as she applied her weight onto one knee squarely on her opponent's back and twisted an arm behind her back. Behind her, the crowd gasped in shock and repulsed in fear, mutters of _'Overwatch!'_ flying off their tongues and vocal processors. On the stage, Genji, Angela, and Lucio were similarly surprised, but Angela kept a strong grip on her clutch and an arm around Genji, while Lucio ran out from behind the stage to see just what on Earth was happening

None of them saw the security guards stationed around the doors running for the stage.

"Why are you doing this?!" Tracer yelled.

Widowmaker, though trapped underfoot, laughed derisively as she raised her free hand. "Just as foolish as ever, _cheri,_ " she whispered. Before Tracer could grab a hold, she opened it.

It held nothing more than air.

The next instant came faster than even Tracer could process, marked by a sharp, stabbing agony that ran through her chest and arcs of blue energy that shot from the accelerator's back and front as she collapsed to the ground and watched everything fade to black. Up on the stage, Genji similiarly crashed to the floor, writhing grotesquely as his mechanical joints short-circuited and sparked with electricity and as Angela knelt by his side, fighting back terrified tears so that she could tend to him. Lucio rushed to her side to assist in whatever way he could, but when she proved inconsolable he leaped off the stage to tend to the two hundred spasming and sparking Omnics crumpling into their chairs in any way he could, no matter how futile in truth that he told himself it wasn't.

* * *

"Winston, massive energy fluctuation detected! Consistent with..." Athena stumbled over the words, almost afraid to say them for fear of their meaning. "an electro-magnetic pulse."

Winston didn't react with the fear or desperate action that she fearfully expected from him; For that matter, he didn't react at all. It was as though Winston had frozen solid, eyes wide and jaw agape. Slowly, he raised one trembling hand and placed it on the side of his face for a split second before tightening it into a fist and driving it into the wall next to him with an anguished scream. As he drew his hand back from the hole that had been created, his head drooped downwards and his face stiffened, his teeth baring and his eyelids tightening together with both anger and despair, trying to hide from Athena what his sobs and heaving shoulders were making evident.

"I know what you are thinking, Winston," Athena said, her voice steady and low "and you are wrong. Ms. Oxton nor any other agent at that palace will quit so long as they still draw breath, and until such time we will not have failed. You know that, I know that, and we both also know that they are still alive; her and Master Shimada both have auxiliaries that will allow them to survive for a brief while longer, but we must act quickly."

Winston slowly peered up at the screen on the console. All of the camera feeds were dead, turned to snow and static by the EMP.

"You're not a failure, and you never will be," she continued. "Doctor Harold would be proud."

Winston took in a long, deep breath as he cleared off his glasses and sat back up straight. A second later, his fingers were a blur at the keyboard, typing in commands furiously.

"I'll activate the emergency anchor on the accelerator," he commanded, determination fueling his words and actions. "Athena, initiate a Code Epsilon Blue Ten-Seventeen and shut down that EMP."

"Code acknowledged. Beginning full reboot process," the computer replied, her screen turning from her stylized "A" to lines of code rapidly scrolling across the screen.

The race was on, and they both wouldn't stop until they'd won.

* * *

When Tracer came to, she was on her stomach. Pain ached through every part of her body, her chest area in particular feeling like she had been stabbed through the heart with a jagged blade. As her vision cleared and the pain began to slightly subside, she brought her hands up to her shoulders and pushed herself up to a half-lying down, half-sitting position, an action that was completely counterproductive to relieving the piercing agony she was in.

As she strained her head upwards and to her right, she saw that the security guards that had been standing sentry all night had moved in on the stage, besetting upon Angela and Lucio, tearing the lifesaving clutch out of the doctor's hand and throwing it to the back of the stage, and restraining them both with submission holds and rifles pointed at their heads.

Tracer silently cursed herself for not thinking that the guards could be in on the plan, but her thoughts were cut off by a throbbing headache. As she brought her head to look over in the other direction, her curses became audible as she bore witness to the countless dead Omnics littering the ballroom. By this point, the human guests had cleared the room, running off in a state of mass hysterical panic.

Before she could muster what was left of her strength and try to stand, Widowmaker's boot stamped down on her head, the high heel digging into her skull as she was forced back down onto the ground.

As she wiped the last of the pale makeup off her face with a cloth, the cold-blooded murderer bent downwards with unnatural flexibility. "It is a pity. You and your friends were close," she purred in Tracer's ear. "but you could never win. There was simply no chance."

At the same time, a jet-black cloud of mist materialized on the stage, swirling in a spiral shape as a form took figure in the center of it. As the mass dissipated into the air, out stepped Reaper, his arrival met with a roar of thunder, the loudest that the storm had produced all night. He immediately reached into his overcoat and produced Widowmaker's sniper rifle before tossing it to her.

Turning to see his prey, Reaper walked silently, deliberately towards where Genji lay, turning his eyeless, evil gaze off him as so to watch Angela thrash in her captor's grasp.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen," he rasped with cruel pleasure while drawing a shotgun and making his way towards his prey. " _Let's get to work_."


	9. Last Gasps

Everything was right in the world, from a certain point of view.

Reaper walked up and across the stage at a tectonic pace, watching as Angela whimpered and sobbed while trying to yank herself free and fling herself onto her knees next to Genji. The plan had gone practically without a hitch; The EMP had activated, the human crowd had panicked and scrambled for the exits, and the 'security guards' had played their part perfectly, preventing the doctor or anyone else from making a last-ditch effort and readying them for his arrival. It was a job well done, it was time to collect his prize. At long last, some of the most elusive names on his list were going to be crossed off.

But first, he was going to make sure he savoured the moment to its absolute fullest.

Taking his attention off of his prey, Reaper surveyed the ballroom and the carnage wrought across it. The Omnic dignitaries were sprawled out across the floor, either face-first on their tables or on the floor with splayed limbs. Five feet to his left, four of his hitsquad had Angela's right arm wrenched behind her back and on one knee, assault rifles to her head. Next to her another three men were holding Lucio at gunpoint, holding his arms out to either side. At the foot of the stage, Widowmaker had the insufferable brat Tracer pinned to the ground, the barrel of her sniper rifle pressing down through the Overwatch agent's messy hair and onto her skull. He didn't need to worry about where Faheera was; he'd seen her trying and failing to pick herself up off the pavement as he'd entered the building. As for his other associates on the mission, Sombra was maintaining the EMP remotely, while the Junkers had likely taken the money and run.

Which was all the better, as far as he cared. It meant more of what really mattered for him.

The revenant took in the macabre spectacle around himself and breathed deeply. A triumphant surge pumped through his black veins and if he'd had a heartbeat, it would have been racing at a mile a minute. Sombra had been right earlier; half of Overwatch, perhaps even more, was here, ripe for the taking. He turned his attention back to Genji, laughing with wicked pleasure as he kicked the cyborg ninja hard in the gut, causing him to scream in pain and reel into the fetal position at the bottom of the mic stand. He then turned his helpless prey over with his foot so that he was staring up at the ghostly mask of his soon-to-be murderer, leveling his shotgun straight in the middle of Genji's visor.

" _No!_ "

Reaper glanced up, his attention taken off his quarry by Angela's desperate cry. Upon seeing her still trying to wrestle herself free with even greater vitriol, he let off a sick, rasping cackle. "Enjoying the view?"

Angela's lower lip quivered as her eyes shot pure rage. "You monster! You evil, sadistic _**monster**!_"

He laughed again. "You haven't seen the half of it. Why don't I show you what I mean?"

At a calm pace the revenant turned his head over to Widowmaker, who looked to be savoring the high of victory same as he was. "Fire on my mark," he told her. He then turned towards the squad guarding Lucio and repeated his order before turning back to Angela. Her look had morphed into an odd combination of anger and utter terror, the kind born when everything you've ever cared about is on the brink of annihilation, something he was intimately familiar with. He reveled in her emotions, letting it fuel him, sustain him. He anticipated just how broken she'd be seeing her friends slain in cold blood as she stood powerle-

His celebration was cut short by a sudden thought, an unsettling notion that his victory wasn't quite assured yet. For a moment, he stood frozen in place like a deer in the headlights. A quick visual survey around the room confirmed it: Widowmaker had reported five agents in the ballroom, yet there was only four; Tracer, Angela, Genji, and Lucio. McCree was nowhere to be found.

His mood turned to frustration, Reaper knew he had to find him, but where the hell was he?! He turned his attention off of Genji for a moment and stormed towards Angela. He punched her straight in the mouth, splitting her lip and drawing blood, and placed the barrel of his shotgun under her chin. "Where's McCree?!" he hissed.

Angela said nothing, only glaring back with an unchanging, hate-filled expression. After a second of silence, she spat onto the face of her interrogator, spraying drops of blood under the right eye of his pale mask.

Resisting the urge to tear her head clean off for this slight, he stepped back and wiped the specks of crimson fluid off his face. "So that's how it's going to be, is it?" he rasped as he lowered his gun back at Genji, continuing to take joy in watching her squirm as her patient's life hung in the balance.

The monster would have pushed him over the edge had the question of McCree not been answered.

Only Angela wasn't the one to do it.

* * *

The crack of a revolver thundered through the room as six bullets came to rest in six targets. Two of the men holding Angela were dropped instantly, the heads of another two holding Lucio jerked back before their bodies collapsed, and the guns of both Reaper and Widowmaker were both torn out of their hands as though they were tied to a high-speed train.

The surviving gunmen all rapidly strained their heads like meerkats in the direction of the shots, and in doing so allowing Angela and Lucio to free themselves and take on their opponents hand-to-hand, the only option with their usual tools out of reach and disabled by the EMP. Despite facing armed opponents neither was at a large disadvantage: Hard experience during the Golden Age had taught Angela the value of knowing how to defend herself, while Lucio made use of self-taught techniques in Brazilian martial arts, giving him an acrobatic style with a practical edge.

In the midst of the confusion Widowmaker leaped off the stage, twirling like a ballerina in midair before landing behind a nearby table that she promptly flipped over to serve as a shield against further gunfire. Making use of her heightened perception, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Lucio had flipped his remaining goon on their back and knocked them down with a kick before sprinting for the back of the stage. At stage left, she could make out the object that the musician had a beeline on: Angela's clutch.

In an instant she picked a knife from the upset table off the floor and hurled it at Lucio, who only just caught a glimpse of the bladed projectile before sliding on his knees in order to save himself from being speared. With an opportunity created, Widowmaker took off towards her rifle, which had landed a few feet away from her current position after McCree's arrival. Upon retrieving it, she unleashed a flurry of bullets in its assault configuration at Lucio, who dove behind the curtains on stage left to keep from being riddled with gunfire.

Simultaneously to Widowmaker's reaction, Reaper dissolved into a swirling cloud of black mist and shot towards McCree's position like a bolt of lightning, stopping to reform and draw his shotguns fifteen feet from the door that McCree stood in. By the time he was in position, the cowboy had just finished reloading his revolver and was pointing its smoking barrel at the villain who had closed the distance on him, creating a standoff between the two. They circled each other as the storm cast long, intermingling shadows over them. "Still can't stay out of trouble, can you?" he scoffed.

McCree raised an eyebrow and smiled with an air of snarkiness. "Always was a slow learner."

"And now it's finally going to get you killed."

"Not if you keep sendin' your lackies to do it. Kowalski's just as dumb as I remember him."

Reaper rasped out a laugh as lightning cracked outside. "Then it's a good thing he didn't do it. Truth be told, I was hoping for a challenge."

Without a moment's hesitation his guns opened up with a thunderous roar, though McCree was able to combat-roll out of the way and reach for and throw a flashbang grenade he'd kept in his jacket, blinding Reaper long enough to empty his revolver again with another volley. However, instead of making impact and doing what would have been fatal damage to virtually anyone else, the bullets simply passed through the revenant's mist-like body harmlessly.

McCree's face sank as Reaper laughed and leveled his guns again. _Well...,_ the cowboy mused grimly. _Sonuvabitch._

He darted for one of the nearby pillars as the revenant loosed another volley of his own. As his intangible assailant pursued him and sent out shot after shot his way, he dashed from pillar to pillar, attempting to keep ahead like a gazelle being run down by a cheetah.

How long he could keep it up was something he dared not dwell on, lest it make the time that his luck and stamina ran out come even sooner.

* * *

"Athena, I've anchored Lena down," Winston barked while typing commands into the computer at a furious pace. "How's it going on your end?"

Athena's own digital voice, while steady, was tinged with an anxious feeling. "Emergency reboot of all Overwatch systems in Versailles will be complete in approximately four minutes."

"Can you shave any time off of that? The auxiliary stabilizer on the accelerator will run out of power in three and a half!"

"I could redirect the heat sink on the EMP itself and bypass the router that's giving off the pulse, but someone or something is running interference. It will take time to complete this alone."

The gorilla interlocked his toes and stretched his feet. "I'll work on countering. You keep up the reboot."

With that, he minimized the chronal accelerator monitor on his computer and, with a few taps on the keyboard, accessed the mainframe of the EMP and called up a schematic of its software onscreen. The codes that were flashing across the image flew across at breakneck speed; with each attempt that Athena made to besiege it, the digital wall held and rebuilt for the next assault. He spent barely a moment looking over the cross-section before a second holo-keyboard opened up, allowing him to type with hands and feet alike. Whoever was on the other side was good, but he knew as he fought through aches in his finger joints that he had to be better.

The fate of Overwatch counted on it.

* * *

Lucio brushed his dreadlocks back with his fingers as a cold sweat wrapped around him and bullets whizzed past on both sides. Death was nothing new in the time he'd spent leading the charge against Vishkar or the year he'd been fighting alongside the new iteration of the team he'd idolized as a child, but the stakes were higher than just reclaiming a city from Null Sector or defacing corporate tyranny. For the first time in his life the end to the fight had seemed near, only to have it ripped away while he was powerless to stop it.

Quickly glancing around the edge of the curtains and the structure that was guarding him from Widowmaker's bullets, he saw that Angela was working on her own goons, while McCree was locked into a losing firefight with Reaper. He also saw that his attacker, while keeping up a volume of fire, was advancing on his position, like a snake slithering up to its poisoned prey to finish them off. His face went blank with fear and heartbeat surged to the point where it felt as though it were on the verge of bursting through his chest; he didn't want to die this way, not with people still counting on him.

But, he remembered suddenly, this wasn't new either.

He slowed his breathing to a whisper and closed his eyes. He focused himself on the task at hand. Adrenaline surged through his veins as he mentally pumped himself up. _You've been down this road before_ , he reminded himself. _You've lost, been knocked down, and you've been afraid that it's gonna be all over, but you still get back up all the same. You keep going until either you or they can't go no further, and if it's you,_ _well... at least you went out on one helluva night._

In his mind, he visualized a familiar sight; A roaring crowd in front of his stage, all chanting " _Lucio! Lucio! Lucio!"_ as a smile gave expression to his face and his eyes narrowed with determination. This was his time, the night of nights. He'd rocked the crowd midway through the gala, and now it was time to close the night with an encore.

Taking in a deep breath, he dropped the jacket and bowtie of his tuxedo and combat-rolled from behind the curtain and off stage left. Widowmaker's shots followed as well, forcing Lucio to duck behind a pillar. She ran in to flank her prey, but as she rounded the pillar Lucio landed a hard right hook to the assassin's cheek that staggered her back. He then jumped at her and tried to land a two-legged flying kick, but she remained undazed. Before his feet could make impact on her face she grabbed one of his legs and redirected his momentum, sending him flying off into a clear area by the door that led out to the rest of the palace, on the opposite end of the entrance that McCree had used.

As Lucio picked himself up from the throw, both his and her eyes locked on the door, then on each other. A second later they were both bolting for the exit. With a series of precise leaps, flips, and twirls over the tables that were in her way, she rapidly closed the distance on Lucio and was ready to intercept. As she raised her rifle, he made a feint to the left, jumped upward, and raised his legs to catch the wall as it came towards him. This series of motions put him in a position to propel himself back at her like a torpedo. She saw this coming, however, and contorted her upper body to one side to avoid it.

She would have done so easily had he not been aiming for the floor.

Just before Lucio's face collided with the ground, he twisted his upper body upwards, arching his back in a U-shape so that his chest took the brunt of the impact with minimal loss of speed. The momentum from his wall launch slid him along the ground and right between Widowmaker's legs, tripping her as he went through. As he skidded to a stop and picked himself up off the ground, he looked back at his attacker, who was recovering from the unexpected maneuver.

The musician looked down at his shirt as he caught his breath, tugging at the torn collar and seeing the dirt and rips that marked it from top to bottom. "You mind if I send the bill to you guys? I don't think I'm getting the deposit back on this tux," he joked.

No sooner had he said this when the staccato rat-ta-tat of a gun rang out and he winced in pain, clutching his upper left arm. When he removed his hand, he could see blood smeared on his fingers and palm, and when he inclined his head in the direction of the shots he saw Widowmaker reloading her rifle while the barrel puffed out whisps of smoke. He didn't have any more time to try to assess the injury; Standing still would invite more accurate fire his way. Trying to keep his left arm as still as possible, he took off in the direction of the open dance floor at the back of the room, with the assassin in hot pursuit.

How long he could keep it up was a question he already knew the answer to.

* * *

With a judo throw of one thug and a swift kick to another's groin, Angela sent both of Reaper's remaining thugs down for the count. Her immediate threats dealt with, Angela's adrenaline dropped and her mind cleared somewhat. Her eyes looked around at the scene in the ballroom and it was almost too much for her to comprehend. When the EMP had first been set off, she had seen the Omnic guests spasm and spark in uncontrollable agony, but she hadn't been taken in by the horror; She'd brought along her clutch for this very reason. Now, however, with Widowmaker bearing down on a tired Lucio and McCree running out of cover to use against Reaper's wrath in the backdrop, the effect sunk in, twisting her very soul, eating away at her conscience and fixing her on the spot with a thousand-yard stare on her face.

Angela found her mind running through the same words over and over again. _Why_? she thought. _Why here? Why now? Why this?_

But even as questions desperately tried to fill the voids that despair bored in her thoughts, up bubbled from the same place an answer twice as terrible.

 _I failed. Overwatch failed_. _Peace, the old ways_ _, they all failed, just like I feared._

Her emotions frayed and her knees neared the verge of buckling, but through tear-strewn eyes and running mascara she saw Genji and Tracer still on the floor. Though the two were barely alive, they clung to it with Herculean strength, summoning every last ounce of left in them to try and stand up, to fight off the icy embrace of death.

Still fighting in the face of failure.

Seeing this, her mind paused its doubts and fears; She hadn't failed yet, not while there was still work to do and friends to save. Drying her eyes, she turned around and looked for where her clutch had fallen. In a matter of seconds, she spotted it at the back of the stage, surrounded by bullet holes. With a gasp of hope surging inside her, she sprinted back, picked up the clutch, and removed her collapsible staff inside.

Angela, however, did not act unseen.

Widowmaker, in the midst of trying to gun down Lucio, caught a glimpse of Angela as she herself maneuvered to keep up with the Brazillian M.C.'s speed.

With the press of a button, the barrel of her rifle extended and the scope raised into its active position. " _La docteur_ has her staff," she purred, staring down the scope as it lined up between Angela's eyes. "I have a clear shot."

"No," Reaper ordered, himself still hunting down McCree. "She doesn't pose a threat. Focus on the problem at hand."

"Affirmative," Widowmaker answered before returning to her chase, sparing a smirk for what was about to happen.

* * *

With the press of a minuscule button, Angela's staff extended from an inch long to three feet once she had removed it from her clutch. As she held it above her head out over the edge of the stage towards the tables, a feeling of triumph surged within her. In spite of Reaper's sadistic gloating and the suffering of those closest to her, she knew that she had won.

Only she hadn't.

The Cadeuceus Staff didn't shimmer with its usual golden glow, the signature of her nanobiotics doing their lifesaving work. Rather, it gave off an electric frazzle before projecting a small holographic image of a lavender-coloured sugar skull. Angela's feeling of triumph was vaporized, replaced by a mixture of shock and terror. After several seconds of desperately trying and failing to activate the staff, she threw it aside in tearful aggravation and sunk to her knees. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, her words obscured by the hand that she held over her face to conceal her sobs. "For everything."

Her mourning, however, was cut short when a high-pitched, Australian-accented voice yelled out from seemingly nowhere.

" _FIRE IN THE HOLE_! _"_ was what she heard only an instant before the skylight of the ballroom was shattered by what looked to be a spinning tire, the wheel lined with large spikes and giving off the sound of a lawn mower engine as it raced straight for her. She barely had a moment to pick herself up and try to drag Genji behind the microphone stand before the tire exploded on the stage, destroying it in and sending debris, smoke, and fire across the ballroom. At the other end, McCree, Reaper, Lucio, and Widowmaker all momentarily paused and turned towards the carnage before resuming their battles.

As Angela dug herself and Genji out of the wreckage, she found her vision blocked by the smoke from the explosion. She raised her hand to wipe her eyes clean, but doing so only made them sting from the dust and debris she was covered with. She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, trying whatever she could to remove the filth, the horror. As her vision cleared up, she saw that Genji was lying beside her in a relatively clear area, his robes shredded by the blast and his faceplate and visor cracked and covered with the same grime and grit that had dirtied her dress and hands. Four feet away, Tracer was still on the ground. She had been beneath the explosion and partially shielded by the stage's structure, but the wreckage had pinned her down and she was squirming like a creature caught in some terrible trap.

As for the staff, all Angela saw left of it was a small sliver, a fragment of the metallic insides that had been meant to conduct the nanobiotics and produce a steady beam of healing energy. Now, there was virtually nothing, the single part far beyond any chance of repair. Upon seeing the shard and picking it up, Angela was rendered still for a moment, slack-jawed in distress, her mind frantically combing every possible way to undo it until all avenues were exhausted and the realization that the staff had failed entered her reasoning. In a moment of pained fury, she tossed the bit as far away as she could and turned to her injured teammates.

She rolled the cyborg ninja on his back and checked to see if he was still breathing. After confirming it and clearing a few nearby pieces of debris, she crawled over to where Tracer was, cleared off the debris, and similarly checked her vitals. From this spot further forward from the explosion's ground zero, the smoke and dust was clearing up, meaning that Angela could see the arrival of the dangerous new opponents. Dropping from the now-open skylight and onto the ballroom floor, Junkrat and Roadhog stood in a ready pose, armed to the teeth with bombs and other lethal metal devices and slightly dampened from the rain. A crack of lightning flashed above them, showing the former's wide, toothy grin, wild eyes, and fiery hair and the latter's massive metal hook and black, scarred gas mask in crystal, terrifying clarity.

* * *

"Oi, Roady!" Junkrat called as he pointed to the lifeless Omnics scattered around them. "That Mexican chick said we'd have a big fat pile o' Omnic wankers to blast the beJeesus out of, but look at it; they're all dead before I could even scrap one of 'em!"

Roadhog, as per usual, said nothing, only staring back at Junkrat through the black goggles of his mask.

"OK, so not stopping to kaboom their ship was a good idea for once, but you gotta admit that you wanted ta blow somethin' up after those two bitches kicked our arses!"

Roadhog still gave no response, but this time he tilted his head up and looked ahead at the destroyed stage.

Junkrat continued to yammer on while gesturing wildly. "Yeah yeah, we're gettin' paid to 'distract' 'em, but you can't just go to all this trouble and NOT have the explosions to show for-"

His tirade was cut short as Roadhog lifted his left arm and pointed his hook ahead of himself, directly at Genji, who was attempting to roll over off the floor with obvious difficulty, and Angela, who had just finished confirming that Tracer had survived the blast.

"Hey! Earth to Roadhog? What're ya pointing at you big tub of-oooooooooooh..."

Junkrat turned in the direction that his pig-faced partner in crime was pointing and, upon seeing Genji trying to move, locked his eyes on him in a psychotic stare and giggled maniacally. "Looky here, there's still a live one, eh?" He next noticed Angela, who had also seen the two Junkers standing in the middle of the floor. Knowing why they were here, she had placed herself between them and Tracer in a defensive stance. "And a pretty sheila to boot." He looked over at Roadhog with a wild glimmer in his eye. "Think it's my turn to call dibs."

Roadhog didn't reply, only swiveling his head back in the direction of his skinny, peg-legged compatriot.

"Ugh, fine, it's your turn. Ya know, maybe I wouldn't care so much about it if you didn't always ramble on and on about everything!"

This time, Roadhog nodded in response and pitched his hook towards Angela with mammoth force. She ducked to avoid it and ran for the nearest table, hoping to use it as cover, but the momentum of her right leg was stopped almost immediately, taking her off balance and causing her to nearly fall face-down. As she regained her footing, she noticed a white-hot pain stabbing through her leg as though her shin had been snapped in two. She cried out in pain as the excruciating feeling traveled up her leg and through her body. She looked down at her feet and saw the cause of this; a steel bear trap, locked around her leg in a bloody embrace. "Oh you really stepped in it mate!" Junkrat cackled, throwing his head back in raucous laughter.

Before Angela could reply or try to free herself, she was yanked forward with the speed and force of being hit by a car on the highway before finally coming to a stop, on her knees, at Roadhog's feet, who towered over her like a colossus. Another surge of pain raced through her as he tightened his grip on the chain, bringing further streams of tears from her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream, but no words came out, her breath taken away by the shock and the agony. She looked down at where the pain was most intense and saw the tip of the hog's metal hook protruding from her abdomen and a growing red stain on her white dress.

As she coughed out more blood and struggled to take in a breath of air, she looked up at Roadhog, who stared back down at her through the empty holes of his gas mask. He wrenched the chain of the hook in his hand, bringing Angela up to eye level with him and making her grimace in pain as he stared at her, wheezing and laughing a deep, sick belly laugh. Junkrat, meanwhile, giggled with manic glee as he strode up to Genji through the smoke and debris and placed a baseball-sized bomb on the cyborg ninja's chest before stepping back and readying a remote detonator.

* * *

At the same time, McCree had finally run out of pieces of cover to dash between, the only place left to go being through a solid wall if he wanted to evade Reaper's wrath. As he turned to throw another flashbang, a pair of shots from the monster's weapons tore through the cowboy's metal arm, perforating it with holes, exposing the wiring inside, and completely tearing off the hand with the not-yet-activated flashbang still gripped inside. The cowboy felt no pain, but he still repealed the stump out of instinct as he raised his organic hand and cocked his revolver again.

He wouldn't get the chance to fire.

In a split second Reaper lunged forth in a cloud of black mist and heave-kicked McCree square in the chest, sending him careening back onto the floor. As he tried to pick himself up and reach for his knocked-away weapon, he felt Reaper's spiked fingers wrap around his throat, squeezing his windpipe shut as he was picked up off the floor and had one of his attacker's shotguns shoved against his forehead.

"You're still takin' it personal, ain't you?" the cowboy croaked, to which Reaper only tightened his grip, relishing the sight of his former student's skin turning a ghostly pale and his eyes streaking bloodshot.

"Yeah," McCree added. "That's what I thought."

* * *

Meanwhile, Lucio's desperate game of chase with Widowmaker continued on, but the open floor offered little by way of cover to avoid her bullets, and the blood loss from his arm combined with his constant acrobatics soon left him with a light head and a faltering sense of balance. He leaped into the air and barrel-rolled to avoid another spattering of lead, but upon trying to land, he misplaced his footing and tumbled head over feet on the hardwood floor.

As he finally came to a halt and tried to get up, the floor seemed to be under him, up where the roof should be, and somewhere between all at once, impossible to get a bead on. He tried to refocus his vision and regain his balance, but was sent crashing down again by a swift kick to the head from a high-heeled boot that left a long gash on his forehead. From through the blurred distortion of reality that was his vision, the only thing that he could make out with any definitiveness was the extended barrel of Widowmaker's sniper rifle an inch away from his face, she herself standing with stone-cold stoicism and yet seeming to enjoy his suffering all at once.

 _This... this can't-_ Lucio's mind stumbled over itself, coherent thoughts jumbling in a quagmire that made it hurt to even think. _Not like... this._

* * *

Tracer, meanwhile, was undergoing the slow process of regaining consciousness. The past several minutes, almost everything between when she'd tackled Widowmaker to the floor and now had blurred together. The biting pain of her accelerator as it sparked like an arc welder, Widowmaker's boot crunching down on her spine, the rumble of thunder outside, the crack of gunshots, the high-pitched growl of the tire engine, it all seemed to her that it had happened in the same instant. When the tire exploded, the world had gone from everything at once to each second seeming to last an eternity.

As Tracer began to lift herself off the floor again, she could see everything in the ballroom with intense detail. On the right of the ballroom stood Reaper holding McCree by the throat, ready to end him with a single shot. On the left, Widowmaker stood over Lucio, about to gun him down. In the middle, directly in front of her, Junkrat stood giggling like a lunatic over Genji and Roadhog was holding Angela by the metal hook that had impaled her.

Even now, however, Tracer knew she had to stand, had to fight, had to have hope. Even now, there was still a chance. She looked down at her watch, which was synced to her accelerator. Upon seeing it, she gasped.

The battery indicator and auxiliary stabilizer both had the same level: Zero.

A chill ran down her back and her body began to feel light, as though she could lift herself off the ground and float around like a leaf on a gust of wind. A look of undiminished dread crept across her face; She knew exactly what was happening. She lifted her hand to where she could see it, only she couldn't. Her hand had turned transparent, leaving only a faint blue outline that itself was fading fast.

Her mind raced with the rush of terror of what was to come: A slow descent into a time-forsaken oblivion, spinning aimlessly through a realm where nothing and everything coexisted but she herself could touch neither. As her body would go, she knew, so would her senses: Sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, all of it melting away until it was as dull and formless as the abyss.

" _Lena_."

There was the first of it; Echoed voices ringing from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, though Winston's voice had always been different. Her memory flashed back to the other times she had skirted death and he had frantically reached into the netherrealm after her; the Slipstream, the Doomfist fight in Singapore. Despite her lifelines being shattered, shis had been the one voice, the one echo amongst the countless she'd heard but couldn't respond to, that could calm her down and assure that everything would be alright.

" _Lena_!"

This felt... strange, though. At least, stranger than usual. Winston was louder, louder than what she had remembered hearing during her periods wandering through time. It almost seemed like it was coming from somewhere else, somewhere outside her own mindscape. Strangely as well, her sense of lightness was fading, her body gaining a feeling of heft again.

"LENA!"

This time, she knew the voice was from elsewhere, but since the EMP had shut down her comlink as well, she didn't know where until it hit her. She looked down at her hand again to see it reform out of the blue light that had consumed it.

"Lena, get ready!"

With her renewed senses and body came a renewed sense of hope. _Winston, you've done it again_.

At the same time, she heard a sudden, newer sound. It was quiet at first, coming from outside the ballroom, but grew quickly to a roar as it drew near, creating a resonance that she knew she could reach out and touch. This sound was joined by the sight of her accelerator, its blue glow swiftly growing once more.

These were sounds she was familiar with, and they all meant victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one was later than usual :P I'll get back on the regular schedule ASAP.
> 
> Hope you're enjoying the story!
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> GeneralSherman.


	10. Intervention

**_Minutes earlier_ ** **_..._ **

Fareeha Amari didn't need a damage report to tell her that she hurt like hell.

As well as the constant aching that came from an uncontrollable fall from fifteen stories up in a metal suit, there was the screaming agony that her right arm was giving off just by existing, it seemed. _Broken_ , she assessed, grimacing as she tried to wiggle herself around in the space between the Raptora armour and the pressurized body glove she wore underneath. _Shit. Probably in more than one place,_ _too._

For a moment, Fareeha found her mind wandering off in the pattering rain and rolling thunder. The last time she could remember her arm hurting this much was the first time she'd fallen off a bicycle when she was nine. In that case, at least it wasn't all bad; the cast she'd gotten to wear for the next month had looked, in her own words, " _epic._ " Mum and Dad, meanwhile, had worried the whole time like she'd barely escaped a brush with death.

The irony between then and now made her stomach churn.

Despite the large crack in her visor and the headache she had from getting her bell rung, her senses were still clear enough; the constant discomfort and groans they forced out of her were grim proof of that. From her position on her side, she craned her head upwards, rainwater running out from where it had pooled in where her visor ended and around her helmet's chinstrap, and rotated it over her shoulder, a process that proved more painstaking than anticipated with her helmet weighing her ringing head down. Though unable to look far enough over to see the ledge she had been sent careening off, it wasn't of much concern.

Not with what was going on in front of her.

Off to her left, just visible if she stretched her neck back as far as she could past the palace wall and garden decorations and peered past an old marble sculpture, was the bright lights of the outside entrance to the ballroom, sitting less than a hundred yards away. Through the constant pattering of rain and the occasional thunderclap, Fareeha could hear the sounds of tables being upset and guns firing, a few of their rounds whizzing through the glass, and the implications of what it meant terrified her. She muttered several expletives in Arabic; She could have done something, maybe stopped all of this from happening, if she hadn't let someone get the drop on her like a rank amateur. She'd dedicated her life to protecting those she cared about, the reason why she'd gotten a tattoo of the Eye of Horus just like her mother, and she'd fallen spectacularly, devastatingly short, able to listen to nothing but gunfire.

But someone had to be firing it, she realized, the pieces coming together all at once. More importantly, there had to be someone inside worth firing at. Her muscles stiffened as she clenched her teeth to block out the pain radiating from her arm. Fareeha hadn't fallen short yet, and until then her tattoo still meant something and she still had a reason and the drive to fight on.

Drive that she intended to make the most of.

Even with her efforts renewed and all the strength she had put into moving even so much as an inch, doing so still proved easier thought than done. Whomever had compromised her armour had done a very thorough job, and as a result moving her feet or splayed legs beyond just a shimmy felt like trying to trying to move Everest with only her pinky. It would have been extremely difficult even if her arm - or most of the rest of her body, for that matter - wasn't providing fresh updates to her nerves on how much the fall had hurt. Lifting herself up into a better position with her arms was a good idea, she had decided, but with one arm trapped under her suit's weight and the other fractured, it was an idea quickly discarded due to the hindrance of excessive pain. Likewise, trying to roll onto her back proved ineffective as well, what with her suit's rocket-powered wings propping her in place.

Time, however, waited for no one, and hearing Junkrat shouting " _FIRE IN THE HOLE!"_ , followed up by the crashing of glass and an explosion that shook the ground she lay upon was enough to tighten her chest and shallow her breathing with rising anxiety as she tripled her movement efforts and audible curses.

And yet, it was still no use.

Even with desperate adrenaline forcing her to carry on, she was able to do little more than roll over onto her stomach straight into a large puddle that splashed up into her face. Through her numerous disadvantages and the added unpleasant feelings of water up her nose and gravel stuck in her teeth, she forced herself to persevere, to summon enough drive to try to liberate herself.

But even with her every, pounding fibre of her being saying she needed to find some way to break her bondings, a dark, despondent reality was casting its shadow on her. With each attempt at movement, even the tiniest, wormlike inching, failing utterly, doubt battered on her mental state once again. The gunfire had stopped by now, leaving an dreadful silence in the air, the only thing to hear being the clatter of the rain on her armour and the cobblestones.

Fareeha's head dropped downwards, the hair on her forehead wetting as water from the puddle trickled into her helmet. The pain of the impact was now beginning to subside save for her arm, the vacuum that nature abhors being filled with the unsavory truth. Her friends, the people and organization that had practically raised her and that she dreamed of working with her whole life, were about to die in the ballroom at Versailles, surrounded by a terrible monument to a final, devastating failure.

As a child, she had seen the times when Overwatch had failed, from the fiasco in Paraguay to the seeming death of her mother to Reyes' betrayal and the Battle of Geneva, but it had never taken the dream from her, the desire to follow in her mother's footsteps and join their proud ranks. Now, however, with her mechanical wings clipped and the consequences of Talon's superior preparedness taking effect, the unhappy actuality was all too prevalent. Her extremities grew limp and her head drooped once more as the notion settled in. Ironic, she thought, that the suit that had given her an advantage so many times would be her demise.

But, as it turned out, this was not that day.

Without warning, the armour that had promised to be her tomb released its frozen joints. The wings on the back came alive with the squeal of hydraulics and the coughing of rocket engines taking a first gasp of sweet fuel and oxygen. For the first moment she was in disbelief: How had the hack that had completely taken her out of commission suddenly been removed? It didn't take her long to conclude, though, that it wasn't worth looking at this second chance too closely. With her good arm and her legs restored to full mobility, she rose to her knees before springing to her feet with rocket-boosted speed.

As the heads-up display on her helmet rebooted itself, so did her earpiece.

"Fareeha? Fareeha, can you hear me?!" Athena called.

Fareeha raised a hand to her face and wiped off the drips of water with her palm. "Back online," she said between pained breaths

"Thank goodness for that. We have no time to lose, so I will explain quickly: Talon has activated an electro-magnetic pulse in the ballroom and killed all of the Omnic dignitaries."

Fareeha's eyes went wide in shock; Even she hadn't expected Talon to try something so atrocious.

"Winston and I have deactivated the EMP," Athena continued to explain. "but the situation is still critical and everyone left inside is in mortal danger. Get in there, quickly!"

By now the full-heads-up display had returned on her helmet, the visor illuminated by multiple pieces of information. A damage report flashed brightly saying that the suit was dented but fully operational, while another informed of sedatives and hydraulic assistance measures being taken to compensate for her broken arm. All of it now was useless to Faheera, as she had only one thing on her mind. After bending down and picking up her rocket launcher, she took off for the ceiling, vivified hope surging through her veins.

The protector of the innocent was not done yet.

As she soared up into the night sky, she caught out of the corner of her eye that the storm seemed to be nearing its time of passing. Though the rain still fell in sheets and the cold wind whipped through the air, the clouds were moving off now, and in parts the moon could even be seen peeking through, a few rays of light penetrating the dark bank.

It was through one of these beams that Fareeha flew through before contorting downward towards the skylight and racing through the hole in the glass, a determined, steely grin crossing her lips.

Below her in the instant that she entered the ballroom, she could see the full spectacle of the dire straits that Overwatch was in; On top of the lifeless Omnic hulks, Reaper was intent on strangling McCree with one hand, Widowmaker had Lucio laid out on the floor to be executed like an animal, and Junkrat and Roadhog were busy taking demented pleasure in Angela and Genji's perceived final moments. Only Tracer looked to be fine, her accelerator reigniting with its blue glow as she herself looked up at where Faheera was, knowing that the tide was about to turn.

It only took Fareeha a moment to shake the distress out of her head; There'd be time for it later.

Right now, it was time to deliver justice.

In her ear, she heard Winston shouting "Lena, get ready!" Not wasting a second of time, Fareeha's dive came to a swift halt just under the roof next to a chandelier. Her wings spread wide and several panels on her suit retreated back into themselves. It was now that she shouted out across the ballroom, her military-trained voice commanding all eyes to be on her:

" ** _Rocket barrage incoming!_** "

No sooner had the words left her tongue when dozens of missiles shot forth, careening into the Talon enemies and their hired assets and striking the areas they stood in with explosive fire. Without any time to react, Reaper was tossed onto the floor by a fiery plume and dissipated into his mist before any more projectiles could lay waste to him, while Widowmaker was similarly thrown away from her position before ducking behind a table. Junkrat and Roadhog, meanwhile were the only ones not to take any sort of evasive action, simply standing in the open like turkeys in the rain as they caught the full brunt of the barrage.

While the attackers were pummeled by Faheera's wrath, Tracer put her extended lease on life to extremely good use, zipping around the ballroom just ahead of the incoming fire and blinking out with her friends in hand. McCree, Genji, and Angela were all brought to a corner near the remains of the stage while Lucio was brought to just behind it, where he speedily readied his hard-light skates and sonic amplifier before darting over to the corner.

At the same time, Junkrat picked himself off the ground, his face covered with more soot and debris than usual and his hair singed again, and whooped at Fareeha. "Good ta see you again, Rocket Queen, and looking good as ever I might add! If I'd known you could do _that_ I'd a' offered more o' the cash; Whaddaya think, Roady?"

Behind him the hog held his head in his hand, staggered, disoriented, and lucky to be alive after having taken multiple rockets practically straight to the face.

"Oh quit being such a baby, Roadhog," the rat whined. "A little of that stuff you snort up and you'll be fine." No sooner had he turned away in disdain when his face lit up. "H-Hey? Snort? Hog? Get it?!" he said before bursting into hysterical laughter at his own joke.

Roadhog simply groaned. " _One of these days_."

* * *

"It's... worse than I thought," Fareeha said as she touched down.

Tracer blinked up beside her, kneeling down to tear the bomb off of Genji's chest before watching as the ninja raced over to Angela's side. "Yeah. We were like sitting ducks out there. Talon knew our every move. If it weren't for McCree being outside the EMP blast and Winston and Athena resetting everything, we'd have been knackered."

Under her helmet, Fareeha's eyes flitted down at the floor. "Someone snuck up on me, shut down my suit to make sure I couldn't intervene." She stamped her foot agitatedly, something Tracer noticed before placing a hand on her right shoulder and quickly repealing it as Fareeha winced.

"It's not your fault, love," Tracer assured. "We all made mistakes."

"Alright, all the critical systems are back up," Winston chimed in over the earpieces. "but I don't see Angela's staff on the telemetry and the drones are all down. What's going on?"

"It's not good, love," Tracer replied somberly. "Plan B was destroyed in the blast that took out the stage. All the Omnics are gone. Not even the EMP shutting off or the reboot did anything."

Winston didn't respond. Tracer guessed correctly from the sound of primal growling and flying papers what his reaction was.

It was Athena that next had something to say. "What about Angela herself? I am detecting that her life signs are fading quickly."

"She was hit pretty badly," Tracer rotated her head over her shoulder before turning to join the rest of the team gathered around Angela. The trap that had shattered her leg had been blown off by the rocket barrage, but the hook remained driven through her chest, blood dripping off the tip that was sticking out of her torso and had torn a hole in her dress. "She's losing a lot of blood. Lucio thinks he can save her, but he can't make any promises."

Genji, meanwhile, had her head propped up and a hand clasping one of hers, softly murmuring Japanese whispers in her ear that were had the distinctive vibrato of someone trying to keep emotion from overcoming them. McCree had his head turned over his shoulder, his eye nearest to her shut tightly, and his remaining hand behind her back grasped around the hook, while Lucio arrived with his hard-light skates and sonic amplifier fastened and at the ready.

The one thing they all did was silently pray it worked.

With a swift but ginger pull, the cowboy removed the hook. Already weak from blood loss and her eyelids drooping, Angela barely moved, let alone made any audible sounds of pain. Before she could drift off, Lucio swiped at the air directly in front of him with one hand, turning the percussive beat from his amplifier to a soft techno melody. Around the huddle, a golden aura took shape, little glistenings of nanobiotic energy popping in and out of sight like fireflies. The glow grew brighter as Angela's leg, mangled and bloody, readjusted itself, the crushed bones reattaching and the skin healing as though it had never happened. As for her abdominal wound, the blood that had been gushing forth went dry and the gnarled tissue and muscle formed back into its proper places. At the same time, the bullet wound in Lucio's arm, as well as the gash on his forehead and the various lacerations and bruises that the rest of the team had sustained slowly faded away, replaced by fresh tissue and a brief, flickering golden aura.

Once again, Winston spoke over everyone's comms. "I'm getting updates on all your telemetry readings. Is Angela still alive?"

Tracer, along with everyone else, breathed a sigh of relief. "Roger that, love," she replied. "We're alright."

The feeling, though, subsided as the collective realization crossed everyone's mind.

 _For now_.

* * *

Meanwhile, Reaper had reappeared on the floor, reforming again out of his ominous cloud, snarling with barely restrained fury. "Sombra, what happened to the EMP?!" he barked into his earpiece.

On the other end, Sombra's wit was nowhere to be found, only shock and frustration. "You tell me! One moment it's fine, the next this _pedazo de mierda_ shuts off!"

"Did the monkey hack it?"

"No, he didn't hack me!" she shouted with a curtly indignance. "Maybe you shouldn't have spent so much time gloating!"

"I don't care what you have to do, just shut up and get it back online NOW!"

Rather than an answer, what Reaper got was the sound of short-circuiting technology and a litany of Spanish curses. He shut off his earpiece and breathed out exasperatedly as he rotated around in a circle, seeing that Widowmaker and the Junkers were both recuperated enough to continue. With a nod to each, he reached into his coat and pulled out two new shotguns. "Time to cut losses," he grumbled to himself.

But at the same time, somewhere not very deep down, he found himself almost preferring it this way.

This way, their deaths would be less a massacre and more a reward.

* * *

Luci's voice and posture were marked with cautious optimism "I'm no doctor, but I think she's on the mend," he said as Angela's face began to regain some colour.

Genji, meanwhile, sounded like he was holding back tears as he rose and shook the musician's hand tightly. "Thank you for all you have done. I do not know how to repay you."

"Don't mention it," the DJ replied. "Anything for a friend."

"Not to be the guy who ruins the moment," McCree butted in, pointing at the door. "but I'm thinkin' we shouldn't hang 'round here much longer. The people outside will've called in the real security by now, and frankly I wouldn't like to add 'gettin' arrested' on top o' the things that went wrong tonight."

"I can evac Angela and get her to the dropship's sick bay," Fareeha stated in response.

"I'll get the ship warmed up," Tracer replied. "Meet you all there."

With professional speed, the team broke its huddle and rushed for the exit, Fareeha with Angela in a fireman's lift as she took off for the skylight while Tracer blinked herself to the doorway in a split second, with everyone else running not far behind.

But danger was still afoot.

Out of nowhere, the hook that had been the centre of attention wrapped around the door's handle and slammed it shut with tremendous force, while its owner had planted himself in their direction. When they went to make for the other side out into the gardens, they saw that Widowmaker had shut it and was blocking their path, rifle barrel extended and ready to down the first thing that moved. Simultaneously, Fareeha was intercepted by a frag grenade lobbed from Junkrat's own launcher, just as crude and deadly as he was. A rapid landing prevented her precious cargo from being caught in the blast, and a reaction shot from her rocket launcher prevented the rat from sending more ordnance her way by forcing him to duck. As well as the two gatekeepers covering their escape routes, Junkrat was standing in the direction of the control panel and Reaper had taken form directly behind them.

Just as soon as they'd made ready to leave, the team was surrounded in the middle of the room.

As they closed in and tightened the circle, each of the Overwatch agents took positions: Fareeha in the very center, carrying Angela with one hand and holding her weapon in another, with Tracer, McCree, and Lucio covering them, their weapons raised as well.

Reaper chuckled darkly. "Nowhere left to run," he rasped. "You might as well make this quick and painless."

"Call me curious, but is there a reason why you didn't make that offer earlier?" Tracer said, a slightly cheeky tone serving as defiance.

"Thanks to your monkey friend in Gibraltar, I'm in a hurry. After this, I'll have to pay him another visit."

"Ooh, if we're blowin' up more Over-Drongos, we get to charge more!" Junkrat butted in.

Reaper shot a glare at the madman, who immediately cowered back into line with a wide grin that begged not to be ripped off. "It's not often I'm this generous," the revenant continued. He inclined his head and made eye contact with McCree. "I'm sure you can attest to that, ingrate."

"I can," the gunslinger answered, his stance easy but his eyes and aim pointed. "but it don't mean that we're gonna surrender."

"You don't have many other options," Reaper scoffed. "You're out of position, you have personnel down, and if any of the six of you so much as breathe wrong, we'll cut you down." His grip tightened around the triggers of his guns, as did those of his associates.

Lucio snickered as he made the time-out signature with his hands and turned towards Reaper. "Heyheyhey, now hold on a minute," he said, using his own bravado much like Tracer had used her cheekiness. "I don't think you got your math right. I'm only seeing five of us here."

A brief pause followed by a, enraged growl indicated Reaper realizing that Lucio was right, enraged by the fact that one of them had slipped away again. But before he could vent his anger by perforating the snarky musician with bullets, he felt cold steel cut through his torso at high speed, seeing as Genji dashed into the middle of the circle in a blaze of iridescent green with his short sword drawn. Pivoting on a heel, he turned towards Reaper and, holding the blade backhanded, raised it in a stance ready to strike again.

Reaper stooped over, groaning and clutching his torso as he appeared to be going down. He quickly revealed it to be a ruse, though, rising back up as the slice healed over with wisps of black mist and his groans turning into a wicked, hearty laugh. He raised his guns once more, sparing an instant's glance over at each of his associates and the now-definitively six members of Overwatch in his sights to give one last command.

" _Kill them all._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What'd I say, eh? Back on track with the upload schedule.
> 
> Hope you keep on enjoying the story!
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> GeneralSherman.


	11. Ballroom Blitz

All hell broke loose.

No sooner had Reaper, Widowmaker, Junkrat, and Roadhog all simultaneously sent ordnance downrange when Lucio dropped to one knee and fired his sonic amplifier into the ground, sending out shockwaves of light and sound that shielded the team from harm and sent their enemies sliding back. In the moment that followed before the villainous quartet could open fire again, Tracer and Genji followed up by dashing and dodging between them faster than the eye could blink, creating more breathing room for their teammates and allowing Fareeha to take off and bring Angela to safety behind the control panel, somehow untouched by the carnage.

From there, the brawl truly began.

Bullets, bombs, throwing stars, and anything else thought useful in the heat of the moment were thrown with no quarter given, everyone in the room knowing that survival meant moving and shooting constantly. Each engagement began and ended with frenetic speed; One moment, Fareeha was dodging Roadhog's hook as she rained down rockets from above, the next she was giving aerial suppressing fire as Tracer zipped between Widowmaker's rounds and forced the assassin off a route to Angela's hiding spot.

Lucio, meanwhile, had taken to racing along the walls, on the roof, and on every surface he could ride with his skates as soon as the opportunity to do so had been created, using his amplifier to shoot off sonic projectiles at targets and the percussive beats to provide a nanobiotic boost of speed to his allies, himself included as he dashed ahead of the blasts of Junkrat's grenades.

McCree, with his hand severed, kept himself out of the direct fray, taking shots at targets of opportunity in the chaos while running from cover to cover. One such round from his revolver was put to use distracting the hog from shotgunning Tracer as she zipped in to pepper Reaper with pulse bullets, while the next was aimed at Junkrat as he tackled the cowboy to the ground, cackling as he pinned McCree down and held another steel trap up to his head so that the metal jaws opened and snapped shut as he squeezed the pressure trigger.

Finally, in the center of the chaos, Genji and Reaper had locked themselves in an epic clash of former Blackwatch titans. The cyborg ninja would start his assault by dashing around his foe at a distance, throwing ninja stars to soften him up and waste the return shots by deflecting them with his short sword before charging in with blades, kicks, throws, and punches. Reaper all the while would react and counter, using footwork, gunwork, and his powers to avoid and withstand hits before dropping his current pair of shotguns, producing a new pair from what seemed to be an endless supply under his overcoat, and forcing Genji to fall back amid a flurry of shots and try his attack again from a different angle.

* * *

From above and inbetween dodges of hooks and sniper shots, Fareeha called out over the comms. Even amidst the slugfest her voice was cool and commanding, tempered with years of experience. "All points, Genji's at a standstill against Reyes. Lucio, McCree, go provide assistance."

"I'm a little busy right now!" McCree shouted back as his good hand pushed against Junkrat's face, trying to keep the cackling lunatic's trap from decapitating him.

Lucio, in turn, responded with a swaggering confidence. "Don't worry, guys. I got this."

With the swipe of his hand, the beat grew to a crscendo and he zoomed in towards the point with uncanny speed. At the last moment before the wall curved he leaped off and, using a pillar as a boost pad, landed on the ground just behind Reaper before sliding along and taking the spectral villain's legs out from underneath him. With an opening created, Genji dashed in and swung his blade down, only to swipe at intangible black clouds as Reaper rose like a wraith, the mist swirled around his lower body and his guns blazing away at the ninja and the DJ, who both jumped and twisted for cover.

As Reaper touched back down and dropped his empty weapons, he was met with a shoulder charge from Faheera that barreled him over and into a pillar, setting him up for Tracer to blink in and shoot off her pulse pistols at him before he could dissipate away. Like before though, it all had no lasting effect as he dissolved into his cloud and whooshed towards Tracer, momentarily forming to level volleys before fading away, following her to her next blink point, and repeating.

With the fight against the revenant going airborne, Fareeha grabbed hold of Genji's outstretched arm and flung him upwards towards the nearest chandelier, from which he bounded forth and tackled Reaper to the ground during a moment where he had taken form and beaten Tracer to the draw. Before Genji could land a punch enhanced with throwing stars held between his fingers, an incredible shot snapped the projectiles-turned-impromptu brass knuckles cleanly in half, forcing Genji to back off in order to deflect Widowmaker's incoming fire as she used her wrist-mounted grappling hook to take the high ground of another chandelier.

At the same time, the assassin spoke tersely into her earpiece. _"Rat,_ _Cochon_ , prevent the agents from reaching Reaper. Do it and I will see that your pay is tripled."

No sooner had the message been given when shots from Roadhog's scrap gun thundered across the room, scattering Lucio and Tracer to parallel pillars. Their relative safety was ripped away, however, when the hook sliced cleanly through the solid marble inches above their heads, prompting the two of them to run for new positions while laying down as much return fire as they could muster. The hog, in turn, held the hook above his head by the chain and swung it like a helicopter blade, scything through anything within its radius. The agents had no time to formulate an attack or even be shocked by the sight, not before the murderous pig continued to spin his infernal weapon in a figure-eight pattern in front of him, forcing them to further retreat as the hook bisected tables and carved giant gashes in the wooden floor.

"Um, guys?" Lucio called, just barely sidestepping one of Roadhog's shots before backflipping several times to keep from getting bisected. "Little help here?!"

With Fareeha keeping pressure on Widowmaker and Genji still locked in his duel with Reaper, McCree was the only one left in a position to help out, though to do so first required solving the issue of getting Junkrat's knee off his chest and the steel trap off his face, especially since his own strength was beginning to give out and the trap's jaws were nearly plucking hairs off the cowboy's beard. Craning his head backwards to buy a precious few extra inches, he caught a glimpse of his torn-off mechanical hand lying on the floor a few feet behind him.

What was still in it gave him an idea instantly.

With a last-ditch blow, he landed a cross on the cackling Junker's face with his mechanical stub, the exposed live wires sending high-voltage currents jolting through the maniac and knocking him onto his rear. McCree coughed breath back into his lungs as he crawled over to the wrecked hand and peeled the stun grenade out before tossing it over his shoulder, blinding Junkrat for long enough that the gunslinger could flip over onto his back and draw a bead.

* * *

Junkrat would have been ended right then and there had a shot from Widowmaker not sent a chandelier plummeting down that both him and McCree barely escaped getting crushed under or skewered by shattered shards of glass from. The maniac offered a demented thumbs-up to Widowmaker as he leaped to his feet, but she took no notice as a volley from the gunslinger sent her grappling back up towards the ceiling and into a chase with Lucio.

Overall though, as the rat sought out his next target, the tide seemed to turn wherever he looked.

On one end of the ballroom, Tracer managed to sever Widowmaker's grappling line as the assassin swung towards the control panel where Angela hid, allowing Tracer to blink in, drop-kick her, and watch as Widowmaker failed to land on her feet for the first time that night. On the other end, Roadhog had finally managed to snatch Lucio with his hook, only to be unable to reel him in as a bullet sent downrange by McCree snapped the chain and distracted the Junker long enough for Lucio to take off once again.

Junkrat's eyes went wide with fright; His payday was in jeopardy, a notion that prompted immediate and insane action.

Action that came to him as soon as he looked up and spotted the perfect target.

Placing on the floor a mine identical to the one he'd used on Tracer earlier on and readying a detonator in one hand, he stepped on the explosive device and danced the can-can while singing loudly and off-key, despite no one watching:

_I don't know the lyrics to_

_This incredibly catchy tune_

_But I know it's often used_

_When everything must go **KABOOM** **!**_

On the last word, he pressed the detonator, sending himself rocketing skyward at Fareeha, the wings of whom he grabbed on to and refused to let go as she twisted and turned violently in midair to shake him off. Tracer blinked in to attempt to pry him off, but was repelled by more balls of scrap blasted her way by Roadhog. The skinny Junker eventually did let go, but not before sticking a bomb to the mechanized wings that blew them to pieces and sent Fareeha spiraling to the ground, skidding along until she was at someone's feet.

Inclining her head, she pursed her lips in frustration. _Great_ , she thought, seeing the telltale gas mask just peeking over the gigantic, tattooed pot-belly. _This guy again_.

The hog raised a steel-toed boot and slammed it back down, which she countered with a grab and a hard push that threw him off balance. She reached for her rocket launcher as she stood back up, leveling it at point-blank range just as the hog drew his gun. Their shots were as identical as they were uncanny; Both triggers were pulled at the exact same moment and both projectiles knocked their enemies' weapon out of their hand. For a brief moment the two stared each other down, almost sharing a mutual sense of incredulity despite both their faces being obscured.

It only lasted until Roadhog headbutted her again, sending her stumbling back.

Fareeha wiped a line of blood from the side of her mouth and took a boxing stance while the hog rushed in, his hands clenched together over his head to club her down. The ground underneath her feet cracked and she held a scream back with clenched teeth as her right arm surged with pain.

" _I'm gonna make you squeal_!" Roadhog bellowed.

Fareeha smirked as she looked back up. "You first."

At that moment, she delivered a hard kick to his groin, prompting a yowl as he doubled over. Her crippling move was backed up by a heavy jab to his massive gut and a right hook that sent him on his back, down for the count. As she winced and clutched her right arm tenderly, she heard Junkrat's crazy screams and peg-legged running as he charged her way, grenades raining down. Fareeha's first move was to gain altitude, one cut short by the realization that her wings were no longer intact. She, however was not slowed down.

Not when another table offered a good alternative.

When the rat leapt onto the piece of cover and leaned over to fire a bomb at her point-blank, she swiftly disarmed him with a left hook and judo-threw him into the bulk of his compadre, watching with a sense of triumph as the maniac lost consciousness.

She sighed with relief, folding her bad arm over her stomach as she kicked her rocket launcher off the ground and into her hand. "Still think I'm an oversized canary?" she posed, scoffing as she headed back towards what was left of the fracas.

* * *

With half their remaining firepower out of commission, Talon was firmly on the back foot.

Widowmaker anticipated one of Tracer's blinks and swept her legs out, but before she could capitalize retribution came by way of McCree dropping a chandelier on top of the assassin, leaving her exposed to Fareeha's rockets as she maneuvered herself to avoid the flying pieces of glass. In the center of the fray, a Lucio and Genji tag team was producing results, forcing Reaper to spend far more time in his mist form than able to shoot back.

But even with the upper hand gained, the battle was not yet over.

As Genji readied for another dash, the entire ballroom was blanketed by a pitch-black cloud that originated from the revenant. Almost unable to see past their own eyes, the team barely had time to find a piece of concealment before a hurricane of hellfire was sent out in every direction.

McCree, Tracer, and Widowmaker were nearby several of the remaining pillars and dove behind them immediately, while Lucio used a well-timed boost of speed to get himself and Genji to the safety of the control panel, but not before each receiving glancing blows, one of which seized up the cyborg's left wrist and forced him to drop his deflecting sword. Fareeha ended up getting the worst of the onslaught; by the time she'd reached the safety of a divot in the wall, her helmet had been split in half, her chestplate was pockmarked with bullets and crackling with electricity as it gradually drained power, and her side and left shoulder dribbled blood as she applied pressure to them.

"Anyone here know he could do that?" Lucio shouted out over the din of the whizzing bullets and roaring guns.

"I coulda told ya," McCree replied with a sardonic dryness.

Fareeha's response was inquisitive and critical. "Didn't you read over the briefing last night, Lucio?"

"Well next time, you can write my jokes and I'll do your briefing; How's that sound?"

"There won't be a next time if we don't take Reyes out," Tracer interrupted as chunks of marble were ripped off her pillar.

McCree looked at her with an expression that made it clear he didn't like her stating the obvious. "You got any ideas, missy?"

It only took a few seconds before her face lit up. "Actually, I think I do."

She had barely finished speaking when she blinked off into the fray and made a beeline for Reaper, erratically zipping across the room faster than the eye could follow. As she closed in, she could make out the pale white of Reaper's mask, a solitary piece of colour as he whirled like a dervish in the center of the mist, shotguns discharging ordnance at breakneck speed. Her eyes narrowed as she readied to zoom in and jump him, but her intention was stopped in its tracks by a shrill warning siren from her accelerator.

Her concentration broken and her heart already beating at a pace to match her movement speed, Tracer looked down at the device and saw in slow motion that a red and black bullet, surrounded by bolts of energy jumping from the accelerator's heart to it, was about to make impact. Getting hit was no concern though, as a quick blink saw her past it with ease.

What was a concern was the second bullet, and the third, and the fifteenth, and the seventy-ninth, and the two hundred forty-fourth.

No matter where Tracer blinked to, no matter how many times she rewound and took a new path, there was always another projectile waiting for her. By the time her accelerator beeped its warning that its power supplies were being exhausted and she finally pulled back to safety, one last bullet had cracked through her goggles and was on the verge of penetrating her skin.

Her face was pale and her body heaved in and out as she came to a halt back behind her pillar and caught her breath. "Bollocks," she proclaimed. "Anyone else got an idea?"

"I coulda told ya," McCree added before Faheera glared him into silence.

"All points," their collective earpieces suddenly blared. "this is Athena. I have just received word that the gendarmes and GIGN are on their way to the palace. They know that Overwatch has a presence and are prepared as such. ETA is seven minutes and counting."

At the same time, Widowmaker received a similar message over her earpiece before affirming it, something Tracer and McCree both took notice of. "If we're going to do something, we need to do it now!" the former called out.

But no one said anything.

A collective fear rolled over everyone's faces, all of which wordlessly asked the same question: _Is this it?_ The notion manifested in many ways, but it was clear each time: Tracer's brows bent downward as she tried to scout a path forward, while McCree slid down behind his pillar and hunkered into the fetal position with his arms shielding his head and hat. Lucio flipped nervously between his amplifier's healing and speed tunes, while Genji and Fareeha both looked around the room at Angela, then to each other, and then to their teammates still standing. Tracer in particular locked eyes with Fareeha, who was in a constant wince from her wounds and looked weaker and weaker on her legs with each passing moment.

In that moment, as another piece of solid stone was sent careening past Tracer's head, a dark sense of irony overtook her. Overwatch had been reborn in Paris on an auspicious day just over a year ago, and now, it seemed, the day they returned to the city was the day when it was going to die.

But as it turned out, that day would not come so soon.

Genji was the one to finally speak, doing so with an uncanny calm that cut through the deafening gunfire as he looked up from where Angela lay. "I believe I know what to do."

Lucio cocked his head sideways, regarding the cyborg skeptically. "Um, you sure about that? 'Cause I haven't seen anything that's telling me this guy can go down right now!"

"Trust me. If you can help me get in close enough, I can defeat Reyes." Genji placed his working hand on the hilt of his katana, still sheathed and waiting to be released.

Fareeha's eyes widened as though she'd caught on to something, and she spoke with an matching tone. "We're out of time and options, so we'll roll with it. Lucio, you provide the distraction. Tracer, McCree, make sure Widowmaker doesn't escape. I'll cover the Junkers. GO!"

In an instant the team broke cover again, with Lucio skating first unto the breach at high speed, a trail of bullets razing the walls he'd just skated upon assuring that Reaper's attention was undivided. At the same time, Tracer and McCree exchanged confirming nods as, at the critical moment, Genji burst out and tore for the center of the black swirling storm in a streak of iridescent green. As he reached striking distance, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his katana and gripped it tightly.

And with a sonorous cry of " ** _Ryūjin no ken wo kurae!_** " the power within was unleashed.

The sound of metal sliding across metal rang out like lightning. Reaper turned to check the source of the noise, only to see that Genji had leapt into the air, sword held above his head and a massive green dragon following the blade's tip as it was guided to its target. Before the revenant could dodge or shoot the cyborg down, his sword and the dragon found its mark in a single, furious swing and the misty bank exploded outwards before dissipating into nothing, ending the deadly tempest.

The fight wasn't finished yet, though.

Seeing that Widowmaker was in the midst of making a run for one of the exits, Tracer reached into the back piece of the accelerator and produced a disc-shaped contraption, a pulse bomb that beeped in readiness as its owner hurled it like a Frisbee. Predictably, the assassin saw the weapon coming and slid on her knees to avoid it, but the gunslinger landing a crack shot on the bomb that detonated it early was far less so, sending Widowmaker tumbling back before coming to a hard stop against the wall and sinking down to the ground. As she regained her bearings and looked back up, she sneered with contempt as Tracer and McCree kept her down at gunpoint.

* * *

"E-extra Vegemite on those waffles..." Junkrat trailed off as his head bobbed and weaved, barely able to keep the rest of himself balanced as he came to and slowly rose back up on his feet. He was finally brought back to what little sense he had by a sucker punch from Roadhog, who then immediately pointed out that, like Widowmaker, they too were being held at gunpoint, this time by Lucio brandishing his amplifier and Fareeha armed with a wrist-mounted missile. The rat's hands practically flew into the air as his head sank beneath his shoulders, wimpering and giggling nervously. Roadhog, concurrently, raised his head up off the ground, only to allow it to collapse back down as he grunted in extreme frustration. " _Idiot._ "

As the last remnants of the mist floated away on the other end of the ballroom, Genji stood victorious, sword glowing emerald green as he held it to the side. When the last wisps of black clouds finally melted away and Reaper took form in front of the ninja, he dropped first to his knees, then to the floor, catching himself with his forearms. "I forgot you could do that," he rasped.

Genji approached slowly, but with purpose. "The Spirit Dragons of the Shimada clan are not bound by the physical plane. They reach into one's soul and strike from within. If it lives, it can be killed. It seems that even you, Gabriel Reyes, have some life left."

"Yeah," Reaper sputtered. "I'm going to have to have that looked into." He inclined his head back, belligerence radiating from behind his mask. "But even with your fancy gimmick, you still didn't kill me."

"That is because I now offer you a choice." The cyborg placed the edge of the blade under Reaper's mask at the chin, forcing him to rise to his knees. "You may yield and be given a fair trial for your crimes against sentient beings. If you do not accept, justice for Angela and the peace she worked for, and that you worked to destroy, will be delivered here and now."

Reaper chuckled grimly. "Some choices you're giving."

"It is not often I am this generous. I am sure you can attest to that, monster."

"You're right," Reaper said. As he spoke, he secretly reached for a button on his gauntlet and pressed it, sending a sharp pair of cricket-like clicks into the earpieces of his associates, a signal for what was to come.

Genji raised his katana again. "Then, you have decided your fate. I hope that you find peace."  
With that, in one swift, fluid movement, his sword swung down and through.

Only to hit nothing.

In the tiniest of moments to capitalize on Reaper had vanished, disappearing in tufts of inky smoke. Before Genji could reel in his swing, his missing enemy appeared directly behind him and dug his clawed fingers into the cyborg's right elbow, ripping at the cybernetic joints and forcing him to drop the sword and cry out in pain briefly. It was only a moment later, though, that the ninja swung his legs up towards the roof and kicked the air as hard as he could. The resulting transfer of weight and energy brought the dual benefit of wrenching him free of the revenant's grasp and throwing him off balance, allowing Genji to drop-kick the monster to the ground once he himself had recovered.

At the same time, Widowmaker pointed her left arm into the air and launched a small device loaded with a purple substance straight upwards. " _Gas mine!_ " cried Tracer as she snatched the bomb mid-blink and raced out into the gardens to let it detonate out of anyone else's reach. The distraction, however, provided time enough for the assassin to jump up and wrap her legs around McCree's neck in a chokehold, which itself coincided with when Junkrat pulled a cord on his bomb harness that dropped every explosive attached to it and Roadhog reached for his scrap gun, producing a feeding mechanism and a hand crank that both attached on and allowed the Junker to spew lethal piles of twisted trash at a blistering rate. Combined, the chaos and carnage the two wrought sent Lucio and Fareeha scrambling for cover.

Before Widowmaker's stranglehold could grow fatally tight, her grip was loosened as two shots from McCree's revolver ripped through her thigh and she dropped to the ground. She tried to stand, but her leg gave out and sent her down to one knee. With the cowboy still gasping for air and Tracer returning, she purred into her earpiece. "We need to leave."

"I agree," Reaper replied as he dissipated and charged for the skylight, extending a hand to grab Widowmaker and bring her into his mist as so to shield her from fire as they retreated before Tracer could cut them off.

The Junkers, meanwhile, enacted their own plans for escape. With an ear-piercing whistle from the lunatic, a yellow-painted and heavily dented chopper motorcycle crashed through the outside door, nearly running over Tracer as she tried to pursue the Talon agents, and skidded in just where its owners were. With the rat cackling as he crawled into the sidecar and the hog at the handlebars, they took off back for the exit they came in. Unlike their allies though, their escape was intervened as Fareeha loosed her wrist-mounted missile, throwing the bike into the air upon impact and shattering it into a million pieces as it crushed itself into a heap of metal against the wall next to the door.

As Junkrat crawled out from the smouldering wreckage and Roadhog groaned inside it, he saw Faheera limping up to him, her eyes steely and her face scowling. "That's it: You're _totally_ not gettin' any of my money," he moaned.

Fareeha picked him up by the hair and stared daggers at him. "Neither are you."

For the first time that night, Junkrat's voice went quiet. "Well... shit."

With that, Fareeha landed one last punch and knocked him out again.

* * *

It was over. After what had felt like a lifetime, the battle had finally ended.

The team let out a collective sigh of relief as the luxury of slowing down, collecting their thoughts, and licking their wounds could finally be afforded. The group, even though victorious, was in a sorry state: Fareeha's armour had been almost completely wrecked, Genji's metal exoskeleton, on top of both his arms being disabled, was similarly pockmarked and scratched, and everyone else was covered in scrapes, abrasions, and minor lacerations. Amid the ruins of the ballroom, each of them found a spot to sit down and take a breather, be it next to one of the bullet-riddled tables surrounded by the haunting shells of lifeless Omnics or somewhere near the cracked and smouldering remains of the stage. Each of the agents took this precious time to let their heartbeats drop and their adrenaline lessen, enjoying the bliss that exhaustion brought along.

"Hey guys," Lucio squeaked out, laying spread-eagled on his back with his eyes closed. "Did we win?"

McCree, himself sitting with his body up and his legs spread out, seemed to be struggling to keep his own eyes open. "I dunno," he drawled. "On one hand, we're all still kickin', last I checked. On the other hand, well..." He lifted his own mangled prosthetic arm, looking out past it at the field of robot corpses strewn about.

"Yeah, I get it. Sure doesn't seem like the kinda day's work you go out for shawarma after."

The two shared a quiet laugh before Lucio's eyes fell half-open lazily and he rolled his head over towards the cowboy, a somber look quieting them both. "Was it like this a lot back in the day?" Lucio said. "I mean, back when Jack and Reaper were in charge and stuff like what we did was... y'know, legal."

McCree sighed as he adjusted his hat, keeping it from falling to the floor. "Sometimes. Seems like it was more n' more near the end than anythin'." He looked over at the musician. "You thinkin' of backin' out? To be honest, nobody'd blame ya. You pulled your weight n' then some since Null Sector."

Lucio picked himself up off the floor, fighting the ache that set into his muscles as he crossed his legs and letting each breath he took sit and circulate before letting it out. "Y'know, they don't say it on the posters or the holo-docs, but I never got an undefeated season back home against Vishkar. Everybody talks like I just turned on the tunes and sent them packing, but sometimes... sometimes I lost. Sometimes I got caught, shot, beaten up, chained up, lost people I loved, you name it. Hell, Vishkar's still hunting for me, so basically every day I wake up could be my last." He nodded to himself as he exhaled through his nose. "But I kept going 'cause the fight needed to be fought, no matter how bad a beat I ended up with, and I joined up with you guys 'cause even though it'd be another check on the illegal list it was the right thing to do. It wasn't gonna be easy; I knew that, but I'm still all in. You get what I'm saying?"

A funny little grin stretched up one side of McCree's face. "Yeah," he whispered, seeing shades and parallels of one outlaw in another. "I get it."

"Guys," Fareeha called out from across the floor. "We need to move out. The gendarmes will be here any minute now."

With a shared groan Lucio and McCree pushed themselves off the floor and back onto their feet, strolling and skating for the door together.

"Oh, n' by the way," McCree said, catching Lucio's attention. "Just what is shawarma?"

Lucio simply wrapped his arm over McCree's shoulder and laughed.

* * *

Faheera picked up Angela from the control panel as she made for the door before coming across Tracer, who was sitting in the middle of the floor fiddling with the remains of a camera drone.

"You'd better get to the ship and warm it up," she said. "We'll need to make a quick getaway."

Tracer got up off the ground, still playing with the machine. "Just give me a moment." A second later, she had cast it away and had zipped alongside Fareeha just in time to see her nearly trip. "You sure you're alright?" Tracer asked, keeping Fareeha's bad arm still herself in lieu of a splint or cast.

"I've been through worse," Fareeha said, sure but gentle. Eventually, her eyes trailed off to nowhere in particular; Tracer could tell her friend was remembering something.

"One time," Fareeha said, almost whistfully. "Mum told me about when she broke her neck during the Crisis. She was alright, but ever since then shes sworn that whenever rain was coming, her neck would stiffen up."

Internally, Tracer felt a swell of joy to counter her fatigue. "Well then, I think your weather call might have been a bit early, love."

Fareeha looked at Tracer quizzically before seeing that her friend was looking up at the open skylight. Above them, the rainstorm had finally passed, the thick clouds and the chilly breeze that they rode on having finally let up their torrent. Though the clouds still masked the stars, they had thinned to the point where the moonlight shone down clearly, giving that which was under it a shimmering glow once again.

Fareeha chuckled lightly. "Maybe I'll get better at it after today." The levity died away swift, though, as her eyes drooped and her shoulder grew sore. "Dad always said that you have to take the weather as it comes," she added. "No matter what."

Tracer let those words linger for a moment before her own expression turned sad. "We did win tonight, didn't we?" she asked.

Fareeha was caught off guard and regarded her friend in such a manner.

"I mean, even though we couldn't save everyone, we caught at least some of the bad guys, and they can rebuild the peace talks, right? The world will know that Talon was responsible and that we tried to stop them."

Fareeha's answer, much like McCree's, was slow and quiet. "I'm not sure. Something tells me that everyone's going to point fingers at each other, and that that was Talon's plan all along."

"You might be right," Tracer replied. "but I guess what I'm asking is do you think that they can rebuild from this, that Angela and the like that still believe can make it happen again?"

Fareeha's head dangled low until she felt Angela stirring over her shoulder, still unconscious but not giving up yet, down but not out. At the same time, Tracer brushed her hand across Fareeha's forehead, clearing back her braids before they could fall over her eyes.  
"Yes," she answered as they walked through the door, a bittersweet smile forming. "I think so."

Tracer returned the look before blinking off for the jet and Fareeha continued to safety, limping up behind Genji and watching as McCree and Lucio rounded the corner out to the gardens.

Neither of them, nor anyone else, saw Angela toss her head around weakly, or inaudibly mouth out " _no_ " as her eyes tightened in fright.


	12. Time and Hope

As the Orca touched back down at Gibraltar, Winston watched it all play out.

The Parisian authorities arrived just after Overwatch had taken off. Paramilitary troops had stormed the gates of the palace and broken down the doors to find the destruction that had been wrought and immediately cordoned off the area, carting off Junkrat and Roadhog as the former yammered about who was going to get the bounty for their capture while the latter shook his head in disbelief. Within minutes of their arrest, forensics experts were combing over every singed, bullet-filled, and obliterated piece of debris.

Even so, any evidence of Talon's involvement was nowhere to be found, and if it was it wasn't mentioned.

Camera crews had arrived at the same time as the police, clamoring over everything they could. The camera drones, or rather what was left of them, were one such thing that the media was able to get its hands on, and it was barely a half hour after the tragedy had transpired that practically every news outlet on the planet was covering the story. It was these that Winston kept up while he kept his head down, burying it in the work of reconnecting with the old satellites while listening while his insides twisted with agitation from the repetition of yellow headlines over reels of Tracer tackling Widowmaker to the ground.

**_REST IN PIECES: OMNICS AT GALA SHREDDED BY VICIOUS ATTACK-_ **

**_OVERWATCH SUSPECTED INVOLVED IN GRISLY MURDERS: HOW FAR THEY HAVE FALLEN, EXPERTS SAY-_ **

**_MECHANICAL MASSACRE AT VERSAILLES: WORK OF LONE WOLVES OR A LARGER CONSPIRACY?_ **

In accompaniment - and stark contrast to the broadcasts just a day and a half earlier - greasy-haired personalities and gaudy pundits shouted in sensationalized tones between the headlines, pointing fingers and screaming literal bloody murder.

**" _I, for one, don't like to think about little things. All I need to know is that the Omnics are dead and this whole peace thing, which I told all of you was never going to work, is behind us-"_**

**_"Most sentients are overthinking this whole issue. The only thing to really think about here is that the humans hired those Australian nutcases, and probably Overwatch as well, to sabotage the righteous rise of the Omnic to the same level as the high-and-mighty fleshbag. Null Sector was right all along-"_ **

**_"The crooks Junkrat and Roadhog are the focus of attention here without a doubt, but lemme ask you: Should they really be? I mean, we've got suspected Overwatch associates on the guest list (the showrunner's also wanted by Vishkar, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms) AND footage of a confirmed member of their little cabal tackling an innocent guest to the ground right before the footage cuts out. You ask me, that looks more than a little suspicious-"_ **

Winston shook his head as a disgusted grimace drew across his face, almost punching the key to turn off the feeds. After what had happened, he was sick of the news.

It had been over a day since the tragedy had happened, since the plans that he'd formulated had gone so horribly wrong and nearly gotten his friends killed, since they had limped out of the ship as it landed, alive but bloodied and battered. Angela had immediately gone on life support while the rest were confined to sick bay by their various states of injury. Thankfully, by virtue of a half-dozen nano-medkits Athena had insisted that Winston not throw out after Null Sector had been beaten back, the team's physical conditions were soon making headway to recovery.

But the deepest wounds were the ones that couldn't be fixed with bandages.

Winston sighed as he peered up at his line of pictures again, his attention turning to a group photo of the reformed Overwatch. In the dark lighting of the control room, the shadows that the lights in the rest of the base cast laid out at odd angles, one in particular casting over the half of the group photo that included Tracer, McCree, Faheera, Genji, Lucio, and Angela, with the gorilla himself wrapping his arm around them all as they smiled for the camera.  
From there, just to the right was the ever-present picture of the infant Winston and his namesake, the doctor that had raised him. Where as reminiscing upon the wise words of his father had brought happiness and resolve before, now it only brought regret.

The saddened scientist reached up at the picture and grasped the bottom corner of it. "I failed you," he whispered, fighting back tears. He again looked at the group photo and the friends covered by the dark shroud. "All of you. I'm so sorry."

His sorrow was interrupted by a familiar voice, peppy but compassionate. "What've you got to apologize for?"

Winston rotated around in his tire chair to see Tracer standing a few feet behind him, steri-strips crisscrossing her arms and cheeks. "I'm a little busy," he said.

"Too busy for me, love?"

The gorilla sent a weary but relieved look over his shoulder; He couldn't say no to his best friend. Tracer, for her part, as much as she knew it herself approached carefully, not wanting to aggravate feelings he was clearly having a harder time dealing with than her.

"What are you doing here?" Winston asked. "Concussion protocol's in affect. I told Athena to make sure you all got some rest."

Tracer smiled. "Everyone's out of sick bay. Jesse decided he was going to light up a cigarette inside the building, saying that-" She put on a comedically bad southern drawl and looped her thumbs around the belt of her pants. "'Ah didn't git mah five minutes then, but ah'm shure as hell gonna git 'um now,'" an impression that ended with both her and Winston laughing.

"We tried to kick him out, but he said he couldn't wait any longer," she explained. "Athena kept us from forcibly throwing him out the door by letting us all go take a walk and stretch our legs after being cooped up for a day." She paused briefly to stand up and lock her fingers together, stretching her arms and back before sitting back down. "It's not like we're all doing too bad, though. Lucio's cooking something up in the kitchen, Fareeha said she needed to make a phone call back to Egypt, and Torbs and Efi are arguing in the engineering bay over the mess we made of all the equipment."

Winston smiled back. "Well, then you should probably know Sojourn called in last night. She and Echo picked up Emily and they'll be here in a little under an hour. It's all for safety reasons, just in case Talon gets any ideas."

"I know," Tracer replied, fidgeting in her seat somewhat. "She'll be worried sick, but we got out of another one, didn't we?"

Winston's smile began to dim, his thoughts boarding a new train. "How's Angela?"

"She's doing better. Still out cold in bed, but on the mend. We've all given some towards it; Genji was first in line after Athena told him his blood type was compatible."

The gorilla's head drooped down so that he was looking at the ground. "Well, at least we got her out of another one too," he murmured.

Tracer took a seat on the edge of his tire and nudged in close, placing her hand on his back to comfort him and speaking in a tender whisper. "Hey, big guy. It's not your fault. None of us caught on 'til it was too late."

Winston craned his head up slowly, but he didn't look her in the eye. "Yes it is. None of you did anything wrong. You and Jesse were being smart and seeing that we needed to act. I was just being a stubborn, short-sighted idiot."

Tracer rubbed her hand up and down his back, scratching at the fur underneath the carbon fiber and stretchy polymer of the space suit he wore. "Don't put yourself down like that. You did good and you don't deserve what you're saying. Honestly, I should be apologizing for being testy."

"Don't I?" His shoulders raised and his chest puffed out. "I didn't do what needed to be done, I left gaping holes in our plan that nearly got the team killed, and now everyone is at each other's throats again while we're all sitting around powerless to do anything about it!" He gritted his teeth and raised his fists above his head over the computer. Tracer could see under his glasses a spark of lightning race across his pupils before it disappeared and he dropped his posture again.

"Shh, it's OK," she reassured, patting him on the back and scratching him on the head.

He sighed heavily as he picked up her hand and moved it elsewhere. "When I started Overwatch back up, I thought we were going to learn from the mistakes we made back then. I wanted to be able to save lives without all the procedures and red tape again." He rubbed his temples and shut his eyes tight But last night, all I did was make everything worse. The rest of you are amazing, but I'm not being the leader we need."

"You're not the only one who's wishing they'd done something different. I've been kicking myself over not nabbing Widowmaker when I first spotted her, Jesse's been grumbling over getting jumped by those Blackwatch goons,"

"-And you'd both have nothing to complain about if I hadn't been so _stupid!_ " He raised a fist and punched himself in self-loathing until he tucked his head inbetween his shoulders and massaged a migraine he'd given himself.

Tracer regarded her friend worryingly, trying to decide what to say next. She'd heard people say that seeing her upset made them upset too, but she'd never understood just what they meant by it.

That was, until the feeling of anxiety withering her insides just by looking at her friend so down kicked in.

She tried to look him in the eye, but his head was stooped over too far. As she looked back up and patted him on the back again, she saw one of the pictures on the wall.

"You know Winston, one time I heard someone say-"

"If you're going to quote Dr. Harold to me," he blurted out. "you're wasting your time. Athena already tried."

"Hold your horses, love. Hear me out." She placed her hand under his chin and raised his head so that they were looking at each other in the eye. Winston, seeing Tracer meant no harm, didn't resist.

She spoke slowly and with empathy. "When I graduated the field training program, a good friend told me, 'Lena, congratulations. You've got spirit, but you should know that out there, in the field, it's not all fortune and glory. There will be times when you'll lose, when you'll make choices that will get you into trouble, when something will go wrong and you'll hate yourself for overlooking some small detail. It's then that you need to be able to recognize what happened, dust yourself off, and most importantly, learn from your mistakes. That's how we grow as living beings, and that's how we'll make the world a better place.'"

Winston scowled. "Who said that?" he asked, stealing a glance at the picture of Jack Morrison.

Tracer plucked a photo off of the headboard and held it in front of the gorilla's face. In the image was the two of them shaking hands and holding diplomas. "You did," she whispered.

Eye widened with surprise, he slowly took the image out of her hand and studied it carefully. The ape remembered that day well; He had just graduated to the science division, but they both had yet to finish the entrance exams to Overwatch's field training personnel. Despite the differences, they quickly struck up a friendship, promising they'd do everything they could to help each other pass. Working in tandem and putting more than their fair share of long hours, they both did so with flying colours. At the ceremony, the same ceremony where Winston's photo of the core team of the Golden Age had been taken, they gave introductory speeches for each other as they accepted their accolades.

Tracer continued. "It looks bad now, but last I checked the world's still turning and we're all still breathing; We've got time and we've got hope. Of course you can't do anything if you're just sitting here all alone, but that's why you sent out the call in the first place. We'll go over what went bad together, figure out how to fix it together, and the next time Talon makes a big move, we'll be ready. Together."

Winston held the picture up to the headboard and reattached it with a thumbtack before looking back at Tracer. "We've got time, and we've got hope," he softly whispered as he interlocked his arm with Tracer's. He stared straight at her and spoke with resolve. "Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be."

Tracer smirked. "I thought you said quoting Dr. Harold was a waste of time."

"Well, it just sounds better when it comes from me."

The two of them shared a laugh before Tracer suddenly winced in pain and clutched her forehead. Winston wrapped an arm around her as he picked her up off the tire chair and guided her out of the control room.

"First thing's first though," he said, "you still need to recuperate. Jesse's smoking habits or not, concussion protocol is in affect. You and the team get some rest, I'll send Emily down to you when she gets here, and afterwards, we'll get to work and fix what we did wrong. Deal?"

Tracer grinned resolutely and put out her free hand to shake, an offer Winston accepted. "Deal," she said. "We'll make your dad proud yet."

"He always was. This will make him even more."

Just as they were about to walk out, comrades in arms united to the end, Tracer spoke up again. "Oh, just one last thing big guy. You remember way back when you couldn't find that one jar of peanut butter and you turned Geneva upside down looking for it?"

Winston looked at her perplexed. "Yeah. I still don't know where it went. Why're you asking?"

Tracer rolled her eyes and laughed sheepishly. "Um, well... See, about that..."

* * *

**_THE END_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that concludes the rewriting and reposting of my first-ever story! I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please feel free to comment. In a week I'll have up my next piece; It's another Overwatch story, but this time it's a one-shot called Second Chance. Hopefully you'll enjoy it too, but until next time, take care and remember: Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> GeneralSherman.


End file.
